San Bergmans wrote:
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>>You say your oscillator doesn't start. Caps are OK, but how long are >>the wires of the Xtal and caps to the IC? And how long is the ground >>line from both caps to the GND pin of the processor?
>>They must be real short, as short as possible!

You were correct San. moving the crystal right to the IC, caps as short as possible and connecting to right next to the groundpin (w/ short wire from there) did the trick. It now starts itself. Funny, I was using a 9.6 MHz crystal and with the old arrangement (long runs) that had to be hand started, a 20 MHz crystal wouldn't work at all.