wildbilly,

Great, glad that's working for you.

I can't answer the main question, as I've never tried to go more than a couple inches to an LCD.
But, I'll agree that serial might be a better way.

However, I think there's two possible sources for the garbled text. And I might be able to do something about one of them if you still want the parallel interface.
  1. PBP sends everything out to the LCD at the MINIMUM pulse widths defined in the HD44780 datasheet. Which means approximately 1 Mhz squarewave signals since the enable pulse only lasts 1 uS. That's going to be tuff to get through 20 feet of ribbon cable.
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  2. The other source could be inductive pick-up, like an antenna.
    Can't help much if that's the case.

If the problem is #1? It may be possible to slow down the LCD data to a point that will propagate thru the long ribbon.

Using the technique described in the LCD_Anypin thread, we could create whatever timing is required to slow it down to a reasonable speed.

If you want to try, let me know.
You'll have to do the testing though.
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