Quentin, thanks for the input.

> Welcome to the wonder world of PIC's!
> I notice you Tris all the unused pins as inputs, did you connect them to
> ground?
> If not, Tris all your unused pins as outputs, and do not tie them to
> ground.

With the PICDEM, it appears all pins are used - portb to LED's and porta to
switches and pots. I checked them and they're running low - about .6v when
the circuit is hot.

> There is an ongoing discussion about whether to make unused pins as
> inputs and tie them to ground, or tris the pins as outputs and just let
> them float. Find out what works best for you.

It's amazing just how many opinions there are out there!

> Also, your input pin for the switch, did you use a pull up resistor to
> keep the input pin high when the switch is not made?

The PICDEM has it tied to a 4.7k pullup and to Vdd.

> The rest of your code is fine. You can make the code a whole lot
> shorter, but as you are still learning, I am not going to tell you,
> figure it out yourself. Tip: PortA and PortB are also registers.

The reason I'm snooping out this method is that I eventually will have the
switch's status in EPROM to retain the state if I lose power beyond the
brownout protection. In other words, if I have a disorderly shut down, I'd
like the switches to remember where they were. If it's a "proper" shut down,
the status will be cleared - I realize that this is probably easier to say
than do.

As for the shorter part, I'll label that as a "duh!" - I'm used to
higher-level languages and this assembly stuff is a bit more of a challenge.
In addition, I find myself crying for a monitor where I can fire off some
"print" statements once and a while. Oh well, one person's monitor is
another person's scope and DMM.

-DO

-DO