At 10:08 AM 11/12/98 -0800, Dave Johnson wrote:
>Can anyone recommend an inexpensive surface mount crystal to drive a
>PIC16F84? I've been prowling the digikey catalog, but not only is there a
>bewildering variety of crystals, but they seem a bit pricey to me.

"Inexpensive" and "Digikey" do not belong in the same sentance. :-)

However, finding surface mount components in small quantities for a
good price is very hard to do.

>On the other hand, is there any problem with using a ceramic oscillator
>in a commercial product? The 0.5% accuracy is good enough for serial
>communications, and it sure seems like they're a lot cheaper, plus of
>course they don't require any external components. Are there aging issues?

With built-in caps they don't require any external components.
But I'm not sure that they're much cheaper.

They work fine, however.