Boy do I feel stupid. It was that ljmp that was causing the problem. When I changed it to lcall the program works fine. Thanks for pointing that out. Why I didn't see this I cannot explain because all my master/slave serial comm uses lcall. I should've cut and pasted.

As for the registers, I did initialize them and intend to use them explicitly for serial comm.

I have a lot to learn about proper serial comm programming. My master/slave code is very design specific whereas I would like this to connect to the external world (PCs). I really appreciate the insight both of you put into your responses. I have been looking at serial comm code to get a clue about accepted practise and have downloaded Michael's code.

In closing, thanks again for the quick response Michael and Jacob. I'm just sorry I wasted everyone's time on such an obvious mistake I should've seen.