|Piclisters I have been following the thread "Unused PIC Pins tied to
|Ground - Input or output" with some interest as I am new to PICs, and
|admit the thread has left me somewhat confused. What exactly is the
|recommended procedure for dealing with uncommited PIC pins?

With two caveats, typing them directly to ground is a bad idea; leaving
them open and setting them to outputs is the beast idea.

Caveat number 1: if the device will spend any significant amount of time
in a 'reset' state and is running off of batteries (or there is some
other reason why minimal-power operation is desirable) the device may use
more power than normal because of the floating port pins.  Note that this
caveat does not apply to analog-configurable pins on devices which have
them (such as the 16C62x and 16C7x).

Caveat number 2: The RTCC pin on the 16C5x is input-only, and on the other
PICs, the pin (RA4/TMR0) is open-collector and can only output a low sig-
nal.  Thus, on the 16C5x RTCC should probably be tied to either ground,
VDD, or /MClr if it's not used for anything else; on the 16Cxx you may
safely ground the pin or tie it to /MClr if you don't mind being unable to
use it for a 'debug' or future expansion.

If you are concerned about power consumption while the device is in reset,
or if pin RA4/TMR0 may be wanted as an output, using individual pull-up
resistors to VDD may be the best way to go if the cost and space are not
objectionable.  If you are using resistor packs to pull up other inputs
and you have extra resistors available, you may as well take advantage.