black bar on the lcd

dettus,

--- Quote Start ---

and i tried fiddling around a bit with the lcd a bit. just writing some random bits to lcd_e, lcd_rs, lcd_rw and lcd.

unfortunately, my experiments resulted in a black bar on the first line.

--- Quote End ---

It could be that your lcd did not survive the "random bits". You can read from and write to the internal registers of the lcd. I do not know the specific board schematic and lcd that you are using. But if both your fpga and your lcd are forcing incompatible data on the databus, it could be that your lcd controller I/O has been burned down...

When you read from the lcd your fpga pins should best be set to the high impedance state.