hi joe,

finally got a chance to get through that thread. sounds like you got your project to work in a few different ways.

i'm not jazzed on using interrupts in my project because i may be handling a different routine like sending parallel bytes through a port and not want to be interrupted while doing that. sure, i could suspend the interrupt, but then what's the use? i'm also not able to use the hardware UART [at least on the chip i've currently got] because i have that port dedicated to parallel out, and i also want to have access to the ICSP pins on a different port. I will have to dig through the PIC series more diligently if i want to use the hardware buffer...
I'm also interested in making the thing work without interrupts. i think PBP can handle it without the 'funky commands'.

does the WHILE command work kind of like an interrupt? in other words, when you're in a WHILE/WEND situation, how often does the condition get checked? every loop? every step of the loop?
even if it does check only once during the WEND, it may be fast enough to feel a low going bit on the RX pin...?