> Wouldn't it take multiple overflows to count to a second if I switch
> my OSC up to 8Mhz ?

> Wouldn't that involve me using some memory location as a place to
> count the number of overflows ?

Yes

> Actually, the only reason my OSC is set so low, is because this is
> the easy'est way for me to count seconds. I welcome any
> alternative that works at 8Mhz OSC setting with a 1x prescaler
> setting

OK, you can switch to Timer1, which is 16-bit + 3-bit pre-scaler.
That gives you a division of up to 524,288 between rollovers. At
8MHz (2MHz instruction cycles) = 2,000,000 / 524,288, or roughly
4 interrupts / second without re-loading TMR1. If that's too rough
(if you want it exactly 1 second), then you have at least three options

1) re-loading. See

http://www.piclist.com/techref/microchip/time.htm

You'll have seen Dmitriy's example

DELAY1S
movlw -const
movwf TMR0
bcf INTCON,T0IF

2) use a 32kHz crystal on T1OSC. The binary division will output
TMR1 rollovers that neatly divide into 1 second

3) change to a hex value for the main oscillator. This will output
TMRx rollovers that divide neatly into 1 second

The problem is that 8MHz is a decimal value, and internally the
PIC is binary/hexadecimal. When you divide 2000000 by, for
example, 256 you'll get 7812.5. Not an impossible number to
work with but a hex value crystal will divide evenly by 256. I
keep a stock of 9.3804MHz, 18.432MHz, and 19.6608MHz for
that reason (and also RS232) as well as 10s and 20s - sometimes
you need a decimal result. Depends what in the code has priority

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