Hi Mister_E,
Thanks for the valuable information. I would really like to make this circuitry work on the breadboard. Then I can transfer it to the strip board assuming that if it works fine on the breadboard it will definitely work on the strip board.
I increased the capacitor on the 12v side up to 2200uF in 100uF steps. It made no difference.
Put 10uF tantalum capacitor on the 5v side. It made no difference.
Placed additional 0.1uf right across the Pic. That improved it a bit but still after several coil firings the Pic locks up.
Disabled Brown-out reset it made no difference.
Pulled MCLR directly to 5v the PIC stopped working all together so I had to replace it
Powered the Pic of a separate power supply (my programmer is capable of supplying 500mA so I used it) and left the battery for the coil. It made no difference.
When I touch MCLR pin with a needle probe PIC locks up immediately so I tried to put 0.1uF capacitor from MCLR to Earth it made no difference. Removed the capacitor.
Inserted 40v 1A schottky diode into 5V supply line. That improved it a bit. Put 0.1uF capacitor from MCLR to ground. This time it worked. I can touch MCLR pin and it makes no difference. It improved the performance but unfortunately PIC still resets and if I increase the spark gap it locks-up.
Put voltage limiting Zenner diodes on 12v and 5v supply lines. 6.2v on 5v and 18v on 12v supply line. It made no difference.
Inserted 100uH inductor into 5v supply line. It made no difference. Put 100uF capacitor from one side of the inductor to ground, no difference.
Replaced voltage regulator with 5v 1A low drop out LM2940-50C. It made it worse. When PIC locks up the regulator heats up considerably. Put LM7805C back. It improved stability.
Replaced the OP-AMP with TC1427 mosfet driver. It made no difference.
I redraw the schematics to accommodate the changes. The code is the same.
But never mind will keep on trying
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