OK you guys,

I am a very very happy man!! I can teach you something now. I doubt you will ever need to know it as you are probably not as careless as me but just in case you are as tired as me one day and stuff up!!

I built the circuit on breadboard with ICSP, LEDs, MAX232, USB and all the bits necessary to debug. I copied the wiring for the USB connections from the prototype board. Guess what, it didn't work. I used the luxury of breadboarding to swap cap values and crystals etc but all to no avail.

I decided I had to check my breadboard wiring. I got the EasyHID schematic out and checked the breadboard and then had to check the proto board to see if it could be true. Here comes the lesson:

If you get D+ and D- the wrong way round it might work sometimes!!!!

I definitely don't recommend it as it took me 3 days (incredibly long ones as well!!) to find it. If it weren't intermittent it would have been so much easier. I used to be a TV engineer 25 years ago and this whole thing takes me back a long way. Intermittent faults are a nightmare!

I just want to thank you guys for holding my hand through this trauma and I just want to add:

"There's no problem. Only learning opportunities"

Now where have I heard that before. I'm elated with how much I have learned!

The other person I would like to quote is Alain, AKA Altronics. "If there is the word Problem in the question, the answer is almost certainly RTFM". He is so right but I need one piece of info to make him right for me..... Does anyone know of any good books on how to understand a Microchip Datasheet? PBP books just don't cut it.

Cheers a very lot, back to the wonderful world of coding!

Rich