Hi all!

I have what may be a dumb question about the timers on the 16F877:

Is it possible to use one of the timers just as a plain old timer/clock without using another crystal hooked-up to the T1OSO/T1OSI pins? Is there any way to use a timer like this with just software control?

I'm doing this for a tach-type counter, with the pulses being input directly on T0CKI to be counted with timer0, and I was trying to figure out how to use one of the other timers to count a specified amount of time, then generate an interrupt, then I would have a certain amount of pulses in a specified time. I would like to do this using an interrupt for the period instead of a delay or a loop so that it would be entirely in the background.

Any help and code samples would be GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks!

-Mark