Lawrence Lile wrote:

> My understanding is that the WDT will mostly protect the chip from
> software related glitches.  Anyone else have a clear idea?

  Software-related glitches?  Are these the same as small insects?  Hail
the day when a hardware device protects from these!

  The WDT protects from the *hardware* glitches which PC users know and
love so well (if, that is, they can distinguish them from the MS
software ones).  What do you do when your PC hangs?  You reboot it.
You've lost the data, but you just get back up again and keep on
working.

  The WDT implements a similar function for the PIC, but does it
automatically.  Particularly for "short brownouts" or sags; the PIC
goes down, loses the current data, but resurrects itself and valiantly
keeps doing its job.  In many applications, you won't notice.  Anyone
who suffers from "ectopics" of the heart can thank their cardiac WDT
(actually, a whole group of them!) that they just keep on going even
when the program has bugs.

  Cheers,
        Paul B.