Pickit 3 failed to program

[Michael]

sorry about all this mindless gibber jabber. ran into this which clarifies much in plain english --
https://www.theengineeringprojects.c...-pic16f88.html

and wow, pretty nice site I've never seen before. !

[mpgmike]

Early PIC chips had a dedicated RESET pin; MCLR. Later they allowed that pin to also work as a generic digital input, giving it a name (like RE3). I am not aware of ANY PIC that allows the MCLR pin to be configured as an output. As a caveat, I do know of someone that was able to finagle the MCLR pin to act as a very low current output using the Weak Pull-Up function by turning it on and off.

[towlerg]

Most "modern" PIC devices allow MCLR to be turned off by setting the appropriate bit in config fuses. This pis should be used as an absolute last resort as loads will potentially upset ICSP.