Yes, I definitely want the hardware PWM. But it's not the 50% duty that I was concerned with, it was the 1 second period.

I see now the relation between clock speed and the PWM output. So there's no way I can get it slow enough to use it as a heartbeat (1 sec period) in the background if we limitted with a 4MHz lower range.

I was hoping to use it as a debugging tool; to show that a PIC is indeed working without taking any clock cycles (disturbing cycle sensitive logic). And I wanted to try out HPWM, I'm nowhere near ready to get back on my CNC project; have to complete my residential alarm system first (and I'd like to get that interfacing with android, text messenging and web page - lots of learning).

Robert