hello Henrik,
I thought HSERIN/HSEROUT would automatcally take care of the handshake. In the background.

On the other hand i could put some more debug commands into the 16F88 code so that it has for example

3 Debug commands between the main program lines. That should translate to 3 times sending the same which
translates to less waiting of the 18F1320 to get what it wants.It doesn´t matter that this will slow down the 16F88, it has the slow task.

Haha! Thats the total primitive method. I guess you will call it "Flintstone style programming".