I prototyped a circuit which uses a pic16lf628A uC to drive an alphanumeric LED display.
The PIC uC can't source/sink the amount of current to light up more then like 4 segments at full brightness.
Two questions...
1) Does it damage the uC to attempt to drive more current then it is supposed to? The output voltage on the output pins drops from 3.0V (which is VDD) to about 2.3v. This is because the PIC output pin isn't an ideal voltage source so their is a voltage drop across output resistance of the pic. Therefore, since i'm limited by the amount of current the PIC can supply/source i could eliminate the current limiting resistors since the voltage is already dropped to about 2.2V which is the operating voltage of the LEDs. Over time will this eventually ruin the pic?