Thanks again for all of the information.

I looked at Chris Brooks' "How to connect an LED to your 8052" from searching the forum before posting. Unfortunately, I came to a conclusion similar to Lee's. I assumed I was missing something, and probably still am, but it sounds like maybe it isn't as clear/correct as it could be.

Before posting, I tested the controller pin and the transisitor individually to confirm the parts worked as expected. As I mentioned, the controller works fine with just a resistor and LED, and a basic transistor circuit works fine when driving from +5 or GND instead of the controller. Putting them together is what failed.

The LED was just supposed to be a step towards controlling the reset pin on another device. That is working fine so I became curious as to what went wrong with the LED experiment. I'll look into what's been posted.

Thanks.