hi Tony,

> Are there any switches / options / prayers I could use to set the
> bloody thing up so that I can actually compile a small amount of code
> _without_ spending a week on it and tearing out my hair in the
> process?

:-) have you read the "MPLAB tutorial" (20 pages)? It's not that
difficult...
Why don't you just forget MPLAB and try an old version of MPASM (V01.01).
It's quite simple in use.

--
tk.
(Did you specify the pic type in your source code?)