>4049/4050 running at 5V aren't very beefy.  Run 'em at 15V
>and they can whump out some juice, but at 5V, HC244 would
>be better I think.

Yes you're right. However, could you feed back the multiplied
voltage to power the 4050s ? Or is that getting a bit close to
"something for nothing" ?

> As a disclaimer, I'm doing some guessing here not having
> the datasheets before me; check it out.  Another possibility
> for this might be some kind of "clock line driver" chip

Or just a plain npn switcher transistor driven by the PIC. It
doesn't sound like the shape of the wave into the multiplier
is super-critical for this application, it's only ending up as DC

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