Is it possible to run multiple PIC's of one oscillator source. I don't want
them synced or anything (I know the Q cycles will be out), it's a board
space and (possibly) a calibration issue. Have a project that will prob.
require multiple PIC's. Be much nicer to have 1 oscillator. Ideally it
wouldn't matter how many PIC's were hooked up (but this may not be possible
with reasonable accuracy due to load). The other advantage of this is a
single clock calibration routine. If calibration was an issue then all chips
should be able to be calibrated simultaneously (assuming the design kept the
clock equal at all PICs), thus if the calibration were off slightly it
should be off for all PICs and there shouldn't be drift between PICs
(although I don't need to count on this and wouldn't unless absolutely
neccesary).

I must say, a Q cycle synchronisation capability would be a fantastic
addition for multi PIC projects. Something like the synchronisation scheme
used in multimaster I2C (from memory) to obtain clock sync. The basic idea
of this would be a Clock hold pin on your PIC's. If this pin were held low
the PIC would not be able to rollover from Q4 to Q1, hence you would tie
this pin of your PIC's together, hold it low for a few cycles (after OSC
startup) to get all the PIC's at the Q4->Q1 transition, then let it go high,
this would cause all PIC's to start at Q1 at the same time. Of course this
relies on all PIC's having identical clocks (have to be careful of rise\fall
times due to capacitances etc), and prob. wouldn't be exactly rock solid.
But If you could hold them steady for a few million cycles between resync's
it would allow extremely fast (theoretically at the clock rate) data
transfers with no physical synchronisation. Ideally you could set up the
hardware to, do automatic synching (e.g. every X million cycles, do a 4
cycle sync). Don;t know if it'd work in practice but I like it in theory.

Tom.