Reprap Discount Smart Controller, encoder or display problems

While I was trying to get the display working on my laser cutter I forgot to connect the second cable as I read somewhere the second connector on the board would be to connect another display.
Anyway, after connecting all correctly I got a nasty surprise.
The display worked fine with just the one cable connected but the encoder did nothing at all when turned.
With both cables connected the display was barely visible and the encoder still did not perform, sometimes it went down in the menu but mostly not.
After some digging and comparing of code I found a working solution that would like to post here for everyone running into the same trouble.
Not sure if it is again a thing of chinese copies but apearently the issue was fixed in current Marlin releases, although the original controller with the white circuit board seems to work fine in all cases.

The trick to get the controller working as it should is to define the display contrast and encoder steps.
I found a posting with value of 4 for the pulses per step but that meant it had to click 4 times to move one column in the menu, setting it to 1 fixed that too.
The constrast setting seems to be required with both cables as otherwise you can barely see what is in the display.

I copied the entire section for the Reprap Discount Smart Controller in the configuration.h, just replace it or copy the required parts.

#if defined(ULTIMAKERCONTROLLER) || defined(REPRAP_DISCOUNT_SMART_CONTROLLER) || defined(G3D_PANEL)
 #define ULTIPANEL
 #define NEWPANEL
 #define DEFAULT_LCD_CONTRAST 15  // The potentiometer under the display controls the brightness
// mod
#ifndef ENCODER_PULSES_PER_STEP
#define ENCODER_PULSES_PER_STEP 1 // You might have to try values from 1 to 4 to get the correct feedback
#endif

#ifndef ENCODER_STEPS_PER_MENU_ITEM
#define ENCODER_STEPS_PER_MENU_ITEM 1
// end mod
#endif
#endif

What panel is this exactly? Also the second connector is for a SD card slot on the screen (on the ramps board anyway)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/2016 10:58AM by DaGameFace.

It looks like the original in terms of parts and layout but is produced by www.bigtree-tech.com, well chinaware...
Right now I don't need the SD features and because of the misinformation I had there was only one cable on the first port connected.
And as said, the display itself worked fine with one cable, just not the encoder.
With both cable where they should be the display went do dim in the contrast that it was almost impossible to see anything.
But with the above additions all works great now.
Found quite a few people with these problems all over the net when I searched for a fix, that why I decided to post what worked for me here.