Try unbalancing the caps. Sometimes the crystal startup is not good but
changing one of the two caps to unbalance the circuit can sometimes fix
things.


At 12:08 AM 4/6/99 PST, you wrote:
>Hi   Paul
>
>> If I 'scope pin 16 it is sitting there at 0v, and pin 15 has a very
>> small
>> (< 2 volt) sine wave at around 200Khz. I have checked and rechecked the
>> board and tried another PIC but still the same. I have also checked the
>> fuses are OK.
>
>well, actually im chasing a similar problem on my first(!)
>soldered pic pcb, although for 33 khz.  questions:
>is your scope on the actual pic pin, or on the crystal lead, or
>somewhere else? i discovered a bad solder joint between the
>capacator and xl-- the pin had power, but the leg of the crystal
>didnt.
>
>second thing:  i discovered that my board did not have a trace
>connecting the crystal's caps to ground.  it was ok on the
>protoboard, but i missed it on the board layout. just found it sunday
>afternoon.  Also, i had forgotten to install the cap bypassing vcc to
>ground.  (the poor quality of help these days...)
>
>however, i can now only get the thing to run if i have the DVM
>probe on the pics osc1 pin.  go figure.  im stumped on that one.
>guys?
>
>good luck,
>alice
>
>
Larry G. Nelson Sr.
mailto:L.Nelson@ieee.org
http://www.ultranet.com/~nr