DS1302 high current problem

[pastruga]

I think you are right.

During the initialization process, sometimes, for a very short period of time, I was pulling the chip TX line low while the chip was trying to pull it up for sending data. This effectively created a short circuit.
I changed the code and so far it works fine.

[Ttelmah]

You do realise there is a standard driver for the DS1302 with the compiler?.

[pastruga]

Yes, but the root cause was a wrong set of numbers. I used the RX line as TX. The driver works, but the initialization process (the PINS declaration) wasn't done properly.