Thank you Bruce for getting back to me. I went through everything you listed. Been racking my brain for the last five hours.

As it turned out... it was a COM PORT problem. For whatever reason, if MPLAB was running in the background, set to COM1, I could not choose COM1 on Microcode Studio. Go figure!

Once I noticed there was a COM port difference I closed both programs and re-opened MPLAB (since I knew it was working) and verified which COM port worked on the PICSTART programmer (COM 1). Then I closed MPLAB and re-opened Microcode Studio and was only then able to change communications back to COM1. Badabing! It worked!

Earlier, in my frustrations, I likely made another mistake... I don't think I checked the configuration bits when I chose the 877 in MPLAB. It allowed me to program the chip with the bootloader (of course) but very likely balked when I tried to use the bootloader with Microcode Studio (even if I had the port correctly set at some earlier time).

I'm typing this down so that someone else can benefit from my exhaustive hair-pulling.

Your reply was much appreciated and served to nudge me to keep going. I was sure ready to quit.

Thanks again Bruce!!!

Ross