strange behavior

So I programmed a pic with nigels 1.2 tutorial code powered the pic in the zif socket of the programmer board I connect to my pickit 2 and plugged the led and resistor straight into a header next to the pic.
now apart from the led flashing very faintly (whereas the same resistor value and led work fine as a power on indicator) it only flashes versus staying on when I hold the board in my hand or touch the end of the diodes limiting resistor thats connected to the pic.
why is this ?

Thunderchild said:

it only flashes versus staying on when I hold the board in my hand or touch the end of the diodes limiting resistor thats connected to the pic.
why is this ?

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Its behaviour changes when you touch it? Pull up your MCLR pin with a 33K or so resistor. It needs to be pulled up to VDD (5V) or strange/bad things will happen.

Did you put in the 0.1uf and 10uf caps on your target board? And the MCLR pullup?

hehe yea futz thats probably it, no bill I didn't couldn't wait to see some action so built it onto the proggy board (the one I plug pickit 2 into).

I'll have to make a proper circuit but at least the programming etc was successful

mind you nigels tutorial schematic does not have the MCLR pulled up its used as a port what do you do when you want to use the MCLR pin as a port ?

You select it in the __config settings