I've been doing my testing and research in the kitchen using my laptop this winter; it keeps me closer to the family.

Problem is my laptop has the wrong sex serial connector so I can't use the same cables I've been using on the desktop PC downstairs. Of course I always forget to buy an adapter and was forced to use an LCD to debug.

And this is where things got tangled with this project; all my pins are busy except RX1/TX1 which will be used for comms. No problem, I pulled out another breadboard that has an LCD and will display there. Wrong, can't figure out why data isn't sent properly.

The Saleae confirmed that the message leaves the master just fine so it's 50% solved (picture above). The data is lost as soon as I connect the slave PIC. The sad part is that I had all my breadboards talking together just fine last summer but I'm apparently too dense to figure this one out. Yes, I was using these same PIC models too, argh....

Robert