Well it looks like I am at a block. I have not been able to get this display to give me any feedback whatsoever. I have put a 5V supply to it and a 10k pot (also switched the pot out for resistors) and cannot get blocks of anything. I have played with the voltage, played with the resistance, I have tried a few different displays, I have measured the current and resistance, I have spoken to Newhaven engineers and it is supposed to work ????????? Maybe it really does need to be initialized and newhaven doesn't know because they have never tried? They assured me it should work.
It would be nice to know all of his constraints at once rather than getting them piecemeal. We know that for some reason he has to use an Arduino pro mini but we don't know which one he has. We also don't know if he is limited to running at 3.3V for some other reason. According to the Arduino website (http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardProMini) there are two versions: "There are two version of the Pro Mini. One runs at 3.3V and 8 MHz, the other at 5V and 16 MHz." and this may be a concern for him.
I think you are talking about me, so I will elaborate. I am using the 3.3V 8MHz Pro-Mini and I have to run 3.3V because I am told to do so. There is no way around that. I will be using this Arduino and three of these LCD's to display voltages (from another source) on a power supply (front panel). I have no control over what I was given and so I am trying to make it all work. The reason I posted this message in the beginning was to see if anyone else has ever used this combination and if so could help me on my merry way, but it seems no one has used this combination before.
Thank you all for all of your help and all the brainstorming, I really do appreciate this forum!