I have a simple 16F84 LED flasher that is starting up weird. It's
running off +5V from my PC, 4MHz resonator and has 8 LEDs via 330 ohm
resistors to +5V (hooked to PortB).

My code increments an 8 bit count every 256 timer interrupts. The main
loop writes it to PORT.
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/ksidhu/flasher2.asm
The code is rough and has a few bugs (LP O/c instead of XT), div256
instead of div16 like I wanted, but I figured it's hardware acting up.
Here's what happens on applying power:

1. The Leeds show a normal binary countdown (expected as the LED's
invert PORT)
2. The LED's show a normal binary countdown, with random Leeds much
dimmer than the others.
3. The Leeds show a normal binary count UP, with all Leeds quite dim.

__CONFIG   _CP_OFF & _WDT_OFF & _PWRTE_ON & _LP_OSC

I replaced the PIC, tried MHz crystal, tried a MC34164 on MCLR, tried
manually pulling MCLR low. There is good decoupling etc. Read AN522
and still puzzled. Help is appreciated.


Ken