How can I use the TO and PD bits to determine the cause of reset on PIC® devices?

Some PIC® devices have TO and PD bits in the STATUS register that can be used to determine the cause of a reset. However, these bits are quickly overwritten by the runtime startup code that is executed before main is executed

With MPLAB® XC8 the --RUNTIME suboption "resetbits" can be used to preserve these bits, and the entire STATUS register, in variables that can be examined later in your program. This option can be specified in MPLAB X IDE, Project Properties, XC8 Linker category, Runtime drop-down menu, Check / Uncheck the “Backup reset condition flags” (This field is not available for all the devices).

The state of these bits can be examined after recovering from a Reset condition to determine the cause of the Reset.
The entire STATUS register is saved to an assembly variable __resetbits. This variable can be accessed from C code using the declaration:

​

The compiler defines the assembly symbols __powerdown and __timeout to represent
the bit address of the Power-down and Time-out bits within the STATUS register and can be used if required.

For example:

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Make sure that “Backup reset condition flags” option is selected under MPLAB X Project Properties » XC8 Linker » Runtime (Some devices do not have this option selectable).

For more details refer the compiler manual Section “Status Register Preservation”.

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