mike wrote... >1. is BANKSEL 0 ok. all examples use the next variable accessed in a new bank >instead of 0. A quick experiment shows that neither MPASM nor MPLINK has any problems with an absolute address as the argument to BANKSEL. For both the PIC16F877 and the PIC18F242, the listing showed the appropriate instructions (BCF/BSF STATUS, RPx for the PIC16F, and MOVLB for the PIC18F) that resulted from directives like BANKSEL 0 BANKSEL 1 BANKSEL 0x100 BANKSEL 0x200 in the source code. >2. now that i'm using the linker, i get no .lst file so i can't see what the first asm pass >does. Why aren't you getting .LST files? When I use MPLINK/MPASM I get a list file for each source module, as well as a list file for the completed code. Some option, somewhere, isn't set right... >does BANKSEL generate a bsf STATUS, RPx or FSR/INDF instruction? What BANKSEL generates depends on the processor; this is described in the MPASM help file, under assembler directives. Hope this helps... Dave D. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.