>Is it just my imagination (poor engineering skills?) or is
>mplab the worst piece of software available?

Boy, did you leave yourself open on this one.

>Here's the situation:...
<Nuked>
...Which usually means you're NOT on a peice of code. But I
>clearly am.

>I've been pulling hair out in frustration all afternoon. Anyone
>have idea's where I should be looking for the problem?

Last year, I spent about three months trying to find exactly the same kind
of problem in the same kind of situation (only it was for 3 7-Segment LED
displays).

I had a very long initial delay (it could take up to three seconds), so my
solution to this to debug my display code was to jump around the long setup.

Big mistake; the problem was that I was improperly initializing three
variables and enabling an interrupt handler and *then* doing the 3 second
setup.  If the 3 second set up wasn't there, everything would work fine.

Run MPLAB all the way through to the display code.  What this means is
you'll have to start up the simulator, setup a break point and go watch the
"X-Files", but wasting an hour this way will give you the actual conditions
of the PIC, not what you think they should be.

Or, drop $3K and buy a PICMaster (I wish I could).

Good luck,

myke

"One must invoke enough raw truth to punch a hole in the world" - Darl Af