Hello,

I'm working on my PIC "Power Manager" which is set up much like the circuit
shown in AN582, with a fast main crystal between OSC1 and OSC2, and then
the watch crystal between T1OSI and T1OSO.  This is a pretty neat thing
that the PIC can do - allowing a sleeping PIC to sleep, but continue to
keep time via the Timer1 and the 32KHz crystal.  I have much of my firmware
done.  The problem is - I can't get the 32KHz crystal to oscillate reliably.
My boards don't come in for another week, so, I'm prototyping on a vector
board.

I'm not an analog guru, but I've tried keeping the wires short, etc.  If I
lick my pinky and touch around the circuit (seriously...) I can get a few
hundred ticks into Timer1 but nothing sustained.

I have two 30pF caps across the crystal to ground.  I've tried some large value
resistors (e.g. 500K to 10M) across the crystal, and can often get
several dozen ticks.  No nets are greater than, say, 1/2 inch.

I'm surprised this is all *that* sensitive.  Am I doing something wrong?

Tom Coonan
Thomas.Coonan@Sciatl.com
http://www.mindspring.com/~tcoonan