Modular dac project with micro controller and lcd

[cviller]

The plain Hitachi LCD's are a breeze!

I have made a small board for my at89s51 so I can play around with the displays. So far I'm not very lucky. I have tried both four and eight bit mode, but I don't seem to be able to write anything interesting. If you have some advice on what init signal I should send I would be very happy!
I have connected two different displays. One is 2x16 and the other is 3x16 - both with 5x7 letters. I am able to make it show some junk but no letters.

I'll wait with the grand micro controller board until I get the lcd and receiver->dac chain working using SPI. This way I'll have a more clear picture exactly what I need and I'm not in a hurry since I have the at89s51 running on a piece of scrap pcb.

I'm also working on the board for cs8416. I have used this chip several times, but only in hardware mode. I would share the spi signals "clock, input and output" between dac and spdif receiver and route "chip select" individually to each board. Now the problem is the cs8416 uses 3.3V logic when connected to the Texas devices and my micro controller uses 5V logic. I guess it would be wise to use a level shifter. Any suggestions for level shifting?
I have found this:
http://www.standardics.nxp.com/suppo...df/an97055.pdf
(summary: A n-mos per signal with gate connected to vdd(3.3) and pull up resistors on both sides. Source connected to 3.3 end of signal and drain to 5V end.)
Is that the way to go?