hi!

more on the matter of the chip that didna work, then worked
after a reburn.

you ask some good questions.

the target board's voltage is 5.04 volts, 5.04 volts that is
until some of the LED displays kick in which variously drag
it down as low as 4.5 volts when many are on. the nature of the
circuit and program is such that this voltage variance happens
in psuedorandom cycles, changing at quite low rates, perhaps
only as fast as 2 times per second.

the glitched section of the code happened after a time of
no LEDs on. although i can appreciate that this may be meaningless,
it would be exciting, so to speak, to see me getting slammed with
the glitch when the juice dropped to its minimum.

the programmer is an old Parallax PIC16CXX-PGM running firmware
version 4.3 (ca. 1998?). i do not know if you call this a hobbyist
burner, but i will say that it has served me well for years.

and i must admit that i run PICs usually from batteries and
informal regulatory regimes ranging from 6 volts to 4+ volts, i
only say this because i have never had a problem like this one
crop up before.

i may just be lucky! and i want you to know i do not send these
things out to fly to the moon or run your pacemaker! :-)

-- rb