Hello Everyone. Thanks so much for all the help, it's great to see that there is such a vibrant and readily helpful community of PIC users out there! With regards to my PPT interfacing problem, we'll have to chalk this one up to "big-time beginner's mistake". I first printed out and read carefully all of your replies on this topic, and I wormed my way through the numerous FAQ's that were mentioned here, and tried for a few hours to figure out what my problem was. Still back to this same problem with the strange (undefined in TTL world) levels around 1.3, 1.4 VDC. In the end, it was this cable I was using to connect the Parallel Port to my circuit. It was no good. No connections.. The only pin with a connection on it is pin 25!! Of all the problems to have happened. So after this, it was a relatively trivial matter to get the port interface going (thanks to all of you, whose info was quite helpful!!), and then build up a quick F876 programmer, using LVP and everything. Wow. I was so impressed, believe me, when I could actually read in the device ID and then all of the program memory. It has to be the crowning achievment of our project so far!! Next comes the code, and the application development, and ... etc etc! hehe Well, thanks so much and sorry for the trouble. From now on, I check my cables first! - Wade -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.