Nick,

BINGO!!!!

I knew it had to be something stupid!! The program waited for the command to finish and the watchdog timer reset the PIC! Disabling the watchdog timer made everything just stop when the XOUT command was executed.

Of course, the real problem was that I didn't read the instructions in detail - I just skimmed and skimmed right past the part about "XOUT will effectively wait forever".

Thanks again for all that replied to my problem. It wasn't a problem, but an opportunity to learn -- from those that knew better.

John P