>Werner Terreblanche wrote:
>>
>> My battery powered 16C71 application is experiencing startup
>> problems.  Every tenth or so time when I switch on power to the
>> circuit, it just wouldn't start up.
>
>Werner:

Not the same chip, but with the 16C84 battery powered, I had problems with
corruption of eeprom values that were copied to ram and back at startup
because of the low power consumption of my circuit ment that if the user
quickly turned power on and off the power would ramp up quickly then decay
slowly because of the power supply capacitors held too much charge (but that
charge was needed when the circuit was in full operation as I switch several
amps through IR emitters).
Anyway, to get around it, in my 'mark 2' version, I have used a comparator
LM393 to sense the battery voltage input to the v.reg dropped by a simple
potential divider, and compare it to the output from the (low drop-out) 5v
v.reg; such that when the input drops below 6 volts the comparitor output
asserts /MCLR, and with added hysteresis will not un-assert it until the
v.reg input goes above 7 volts.
Works a treat and no problems since. I also use the output to drive a low
current led to give a visual low battery warning (the comparitor gets it's
power from the regulated 5v).

Hope this idea is of some help.

All the best.

Dave.

P.S. sorry I couldn't think of a software solution.  :-(