Ok I was looking on the web for working bootloaders for the 18f2550, I found lots of hex and tried them all until I found one that seems to do the required business....

I put it here for anyone who wants etc
(http://www.yorktraders.org/working2550.hex)

I stuffed it in with winpic800 and a willem, mounted pic on a homemade PCB board with leds on all ports, connected it, and rb0 / rb1 leds flash.....

First they flash together for a few seconds, then change to alternate flashing

like its waiting for something, or maybe thats all it does?

I connected it to the PC with a usb cable, and windows saw an unknown device, downloading the microchip 'pic184550 family drivers' it now shows up in device manager when I plug it into windows.

Once connected the leds flash all the time....(together then alternate)

So, where do I go from here to getting an 'hello world' or night rider LED demo into it ?

Maybe this hex is not a boot loader after all but a flashing led demo!

Seems I have my hardware problems all sorted, just dont know the next step