That thought had crossed my mind. The problem is I know absolutely nothing about interupts or the pre-scalar settings. I tried to learn about them early on wheh I was building the timer example that is here on the forum. It is set up for a 4 mhz crystal and I was using a 20 mhz crystal. I couldn't figure out how the prescalar worked. If you would be willing to teach me then I would be willing to learn. I just don't want to monopolize your time as I am sure it is valuable. Here is some background on my project:

16F876a running at 20 mhz. It is decoding dtmf signals from a dtmf chip. I want the program to wait for the pin to go high that says a tone has been decoded. If that pin doesn't go high within 1 minute, I want the program to start over at the beginning. thanks for the help in advance.

Travin

Thanks trying. I tried your idea as it is simpler to implement, the problem was it was missing the pin going high. I couldn't seem to get the timing right.