Gen pic bought from digikey. have three in rotation. all do the same. I have tried two bead boards. I just have Vdd and Vss hooked up. just metering the rest. using 1 kohm res to ground to reset mclre. chip does not brown out. power supply is 1 amp 5volt. clean on the scope. Pg 9 of data sheet says it can be enabled as GPIO.3 with pull ups or no pull ups. so it should not be tied to Vdd.