Using a new PIC part no. for the first time is always such an adventure.

[afbecker]

I found and 8Mhz osc. laying around and put it into the circuit. With the specs. from the baud calculator inserted into the code the code ran first time out giving me accurate I/O from the PC. Now I'm just one pin short of getting 32 outputs. I'll probably be forced to use the input only MCLR as a DebugIn and another one for DebugOut instead of the hardware serial. That would free up C6 & C7 for outputs.

Thanks for the pointers.

[mister_e]

well, there's always pros and con for using external OSC, if you have many push buttons, you may use the ADC and read from it. a r2r network and ADC can work with at very least 16 push buttons. many many stuff can be multiplexed as well.

You could also waste your time and try to tweak the internal osc using OSCTUNE... as i said... a REAL waste of time knowing the cons of internal RC osc for reliable timing needs.