that make more sense to me now with further test, when the pin RA3
has nothing connected to it, the input is floating thus
when adding a pulldown it's...
Because when you configure RA3 to act as a normal input the MCLR signal is disconnected from the pin and instead connected to Vdd internally. In other words, it's not the PIN that's connected to Vdd...
Re: serial LCD 1602 Backpack using PIC16F690 for Hitach HD44780
one last update:
jackberg1 Today, 17:11added an PGM Sw on RA3
to edit the baud rate:
turn off the LCD display, press & hold the PGM sw, turn on the LCD
line 1 will show "Press to Select" , line 2 : "Baud Rate:"...