I have an LM7805C here powering a PIC16F628, which is simply driving 7 LEDs
with a common cathode. I have this all on a breadboard, with the ground from
a 9v battery in the slot directly in front of the 7805 ground pin. Next to
that is the wire from the PIC ground, and next to that is the wire from the
LED ground, so they all go into the 9V battery's ground. Each light is
connected to a B pin. MCLR mode is toggled off. What is supposed to happen
is: The PIC flashes the lights and makes some cool effects. What happens is:
When I hit the power, the 7805 gets hot rather fast and nothing happens to
the lights. Now, if I wire a LED to the 7805 directly, as well as the PIC,
it gets zero current. If I pull the power from the PIC, it lights up nice
and bright and the 7805 cools. I have swapped out the 7805 (for both another
LM7805C and also an L7805CV), the PIC, and the battery. An interesting thing
to note is that when I turn off MCLR on a chip, PICALLW gives me "Hardware
Failure 1" when I read or verify that chip and then goes on and reads it
anyway. The way I see it, the problem is one or more of the following:

1. The PIC is somehow consuming so much power that it cannot drive LEDs.

2. PICALLW blows things up when it turns off MCLR, in which case someone
needs to point me to some better software for the P16PRO (don't laugh, this
tiny little programmer has served me well and I see no need to save money
for 3 years just so I can get a complicated programmer with no real extra
features other than silly useless firmware things).

3. I am an idiot.

Help?

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