sould specify also that i'm doing all my testing using assembly language, the code i have so far is:
CLR ISPI
MOV SPICON, #034h
cpl p3.7
cpl p3.4
mov R7,#0ffh
djnz R7,$
cpl p3.4
cpl p3.7



mov R7,#0ffh
djnz R7,$

JNB ISPI,$
CLR ISPI
mov R2, SPIDAT

mov p3, R2

Loop:
jmp Loop

END


its not pretty but a variation of this worked on the UART
i'm also using the ports p3.4 and 3.7 as triggers for logic analyser and signal generator, only one byte of data is needed as i'm testing the timing