Most people (includeing myself) go with LED's. but if you are not in a
position to see the LED (which you might be in) and need a audible
signal, hook the buzzer up to it's own oscillator and just have PORTA
turn on (or off) the osc.

Jonathan wrote:

>         I'm trying to add a cheap way to debug my PIC (16F84)
> design.  So I stuck a piezio buzzer on PORTA.  It works as a
> good in-circuit debug, but it is rather high overhead (ie: set the port
> pin, delay for 400ms, clear the port pin, delay for 400ms, repeat for
> more buzzes).  The buzzer seems to have some odd characteristics
> also (I don't know much about piezo buzzers-- startup time seems
> a little long, etc).
>
>         Is there a better way to do this?
>
> Jonathan Cline
> jcline@vision.calpoly.edu