/diy/ - Do It Yourself

i have pic related. I need to send 0x38 to the lcd to get it to display 2 lines. LCD is currently uninitialized and only shows one dark line.
>pic sorta related. it doesnt show any data lines hooked up but trust me i got the data and control pins all connected. just never took a pic of it.

I want to initialize it and set up the LCD so i can do cool things with it.
How do i send a hex code to the LCD? Im trying to do it by simply saying P1OUT = 0x38. Would this work assuming i have everything wired correctly?
Im using an MSP430 uC and a lumex 16x2 lcd display.


Will post timing diagrams and initialization process from datasheet if necessary.