Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Has anyone else experienced LCD screens overheating, and drawing too much current? I was trying a GPIO project with my Raspberry Pi in an attempt to interface with an LCD screen but for some reason my PI's OS shuts down while the black dots on the back quickly begins to boil (I'm guessing these black dots are heat sinks), and on top of that no characters display (thanks to my Pi being knocked out).

I know my pinouts are all correct as I used another LCD that worked great. I'm using two of the generic Hitachi HD44780s for this project, but they're from different kits.

Project tutorial I followed for both screens:

NOTE: This happens when I connect my ribbon cable up to the Pi (the ribbon cable facilitates the wiring for the GPS), otherwise I can't start my Pi. What I've been doing is starting with my ribbon cable disconnected, boot up, and then I try plugging everything back into my Pi. Of course this just leads to the power being sucked up, crashing everything, and heating up the LCD. I'm also not powering the backlight, so that doesn't seem to be source of the problem.

Do I just have a broken LCD?

Hi mkioiuq - sorry you didn't get a reply earlier. This forum is intended for people who purchased the Science Buddies Raspberry Pi Kit, and since our kit doesn't include that LCD screen, I'm afraid I can't offer any specific advice. You are probably better off asking in the official Raspberry Pi forums: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/ or maybe contacting the manufacturer of the screen you're using.