Hmm.. have not had much luck so far.
I can get the Windows program to connect to the bootloader,
and the reset function does seem to work since the LEDs in my
project go brighter while I'm holding reset, however, when I try to
program the chip, the software either says 'received character error',
or it goes through the motions of programming the chip, but when I read
it back in my programmer, there is no data other than the bootloader
written to it.

Another issue I have found is that DEFINE LOADER_USED 1 does not
keep PBP code out of locations 0 & 1, and the goto line at location 1
is needed to jump past the PBP libraries to the start of PBP user code.

Maybe this accomodates the MElabs loader somehow.

It seems that even if I got the loader working, the program would need to
be pure assembler to use it properly.

Perhaps someone who is more familiar with bootloaders can shed some light??
Cheers, Art.