Guys, you are missing the point. I'm not trying to FIX the code, I'm trying to figure out WHY the code is behaving as it is. The problem originated with a high-level language program; I reduced the problem to what you see here so I could get some comments from the experts. A hardware problem with the 452, perhaps. If I had some more, I could check that theory out. And yes, my programmer does an erase first, so that the early stuff is NOPs. The ORG statement was just to let me control the code location for testing. Larry Bradley Orleans (Ottawa), Ontario, CANADA -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.