I used to do quite a bit of PIC programming in the mid 2000's, but haven't done anything in more than a decade.
So I bought a PicKit-4 and several 16F88 chips for a project. I managed to get MPLAB and the XC8 compiler up and running, and I've been able to download the finished code to the chip. I've verified the code is actually on the chip by downloading the memory and comparing the HEX file.
I found this 16F88-specific tutorial which is about as simple as it gets:
https://theembeddedlab.com/tutorials/pic-microcontroller-led_blink/
My code is verbatim to the code presented there. I have 5V connected to VDD, VSS to ground, and have tried using pins from both ports to no avail. It just does nothing.
I have 3 16F88 chips and I've tried 2 of them so far…don't want to try the 3rd until I'm sure I'm not somehow screwing it up. But both chips still accept programming and verify correctly.
Any ideas where I might be going wrong?
Best Answer
If you follow the instructions in the PICkit 4 Getting Started Guide you will find this picture that shows the need to provide a pullup resistor on the MCLR pin of the MCU on your PC board or breadboard.
Here is where you can find the document: https://www.microchip.com/developmenttools/ProductDetails/PG164140
Note I posted this answer primarily to provide evidence of the documentation.