Thanks for responding.

No, I'm not using a bootloader.

I'm really surprised how poorly this has gone. There are a couple of guys at work who program PICs, they program strickly in assembly. I wondered why they went through all the trouble, at least when assembly wasn't actually required for speed or code size.

The answer is, because the higher level tools aren't ready for prime time.
I can't believe all the convoluted ways to do things I've looked up, which also happen to not work right or as often as not don't work at all.

Sure this is frustration talking, but changing DEFINE OSC 12 to DEFINE OSC 11 (actual clock is 11.0592 MHz) results in 8 assembler errors, minor variations of:
Error c:\pbp\pbppic14.lib 2827 : [225] Undefined Symbol 'PAUSEUS'

and still no readable serial characters (at least with any communication protocol from this planet).

And who's idea is that of a useful or appropriate error msg ?

Bobby