At 09:33 AM 29/08/02 -0500, you wrote:
>David,
>
>A newbie addition to this question.  What should the unused pins be "tied"
>to.  Ground???

Ken,
As previously advised, don't tie them to anything. Leave them not connected
& set as output.
This is not a "floating" pin as the PIC is driving the output to a known
state. The problem is
when the pin is set to *input* and left not connected. Then, external
forces (the way you hold
your tongue, phase of the moon, etc!) will let the pin wander into the
undefined region (neither
high nor low) and the PIC pin input circuitry will draw more current and
possible behave in a
less than predictable manner. As others have pointed out, if you have spare
port pins, you
can always add pull up/down resistors to them for future expansion. I hate
having PIC pins on
a board that are unused! I usually think of extra features to use them at
minimal cost or bring
them out to a connector (or pads) and chuck a series resistor in there (for
driving a LED) or
a pull-up resistor for adding a switch later on. A lot of the boards I
design are multi-purpose.
Regards...

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