Sorry i didnt explain that the code was originally written for a basic stamp,
hence the nibble sized variable in question. the code is for displaying large charaters on a 4x20 serial LCD or serial backpack equiped LCD. the code writes custom characters to the LCD, then arranges them to make the large 4 line tall numbers (0-9). all this was spit out serially to the LCD. I changed all the serouts in the origonal code to LCDOUT in proper PBP form, but since PBP doesnt have a nibble sized variable, only bytes and words, the WORD sized variable "pat" can't be broken into 4 NIB's (i.e pat.NIB0) like it will let you in pBasic. it can only do two bytes or 16 bits.. i think that is the reason my version of the code (from my first post) isnt working. all i get is a blank LCD.. it would be nice to use this code to display large numbers because it only takes up about 600 WORDs, i've done a version that displays the 16 compass points (NNW) in large text using the first part of this code to write the custom bit patterns to my LCD's CGRAM, but it takes up 3397 WORDs using BRANCH to a subroutine for each compass point which is spelled out in my second reply, anyway, the original code is at:

http://www.seetron.com/pdf/lcd_an1.pdf

and as you can see it is written for pBASIC and meant for serial LCD's, i want to convert it to PBP for a parallel LCD..