Hey guys, I've followed every guide i can find to set up my chip on a breadboard and 2 separate chips refuse to work. I have a 20v power supply regulated to 5v. 10uf caps across 20v in/ground and 5v/ground with an led telling me that power is connected.
pin 1 - 10k resistor 5v.
pin 7 - 5v.
pin 8 - ground.
pin 9/10 - 2x parallel .01uf caps on each (20pf equivelant?) + 16mhz crystal. ground.
pin 19 - led to 220 resistor to ground.
pin 20 - 5v.
pin 21 - 5v.
pin 22 - ground.
Any help at all would be great because I'm starting to get irritated 
ps. running the blink LED sample, all pins on chip except grounded are reading voltages.
I'd try this with the built-in oscillator (8 MHz) if you can. I'm not sure you've got your oscillator set up right. 2x 0.01uF caps in parallel is 20nF, not 20pF. That's way too much capacitance for a crystal to oscillate.
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The Gadget Shield: accelerometer, RGB LED, IR transmit/receive, speaker, microphone, light sensor, potentiometer, pushbuttons
Another alternative if you don't have 20pF caps handy, try it without any, many crystals will oscillate fairly well without any, especially in a breadboard situation where there may be relatively more stray capacitance. It's not good engineering practice, but just something to try to get you going. Most certainly the oscillator won't run with the 0.01uF caps, with two in parallel that's about 1000 times too much capacitance. 1000pF = 1nF and 1000nF = 1uF.
Such a bittersweet moment. I love and hate you both so much right now Turns out you were right about the caps, I always forget its micro, nano pico. works fine without any, so ill grab a couple 22pf one of the days just for the sake of it now. thanks again guys
Haha, well like my wife says, it may be better to be abused than ignored. 
You can also take two pieces of insulated hookup wire, twist them together tightly, and get a few pF out of that. Sorry, can't quantify it, though!
or
http://dipmicro.com/store/C1K22-50
A bit expensive to just buy two of them but if you need other stuff, buy a dozen of them with other stuff to justify shipping.
dipmicro is running a free/reduced shipping coupon SPRING10 for $10 or more.
Don't buy too many like what I did. I bought 1,000 of them. They were so cheap by the super dozen $) =(
Something I learned here on the forums: A crystal's data sheet often specifies load capacitance. This is not the same as the values for the load capacitors! See Abracon | Fox for the proper calculation.
For example, I have a crystal that specifies 18pF load capacitance. Assuming the two load capacitors are the same value (normally they should be), and 5pF stray capacitance, calculate the capacitor values as C = 2 * (CL - 5). So I should use 2 * (18 - 5) = 26pF capacitors.
Yes, I bought 18pF capacitors 
and it seemed to run fine with them. Not sure how much practical difference this actually makes, given that the oscillator will often run without any capacitors at all, but I figure I might as well get it right! If nothing else, the proper capacitor values should ensure that the crystal oscillates at a frequency very close to its specified value.
pin 9/10 - 2x parallel .01uf caps on each (20pf equivelant?)
No. Two 0.01uF capacitors in parallel gives 0.02 uF or 20000 pF. (I see Rugged and Jack already mentioned this one.)
You also should have bypass capacitors on both VCC pins and on the AREF pin.
Don
