include files will seldom if ever compile on their own
Cool. I think the parallel version did which probably gave me the wrong assumptions. Anyway... couldn't get the parallel option working after trying both displays and throwing everything at it. I'm guessing there was a jumper fuse on the display that needed soldering closed to configure the data lines from 8 to 4, but I couldn't find any datasheet for the display so gave up that and went to serial. Took a bit of head scratching to match up the I2C lines to completely different labelled pads on the display, and then I finally got something from the display - a bunch of plain (non graphical looking) 1s and 0s. Took me 5-10 mins to figure out that's actually what was supposed to be there for the serial code - I was expecting demo graphics and large text - but that simply required copying over that stuff from the parallel code.
So, good stuff again Richard. Hats off and thanks again for the assistance.

Cheers,

Troy