Well I've tried everyone's excellent suggestions. Unfortunately...still banging my head. Results:

The following works:

mov DPTR,#STRING1
...where STRING1 is located at end of prog (no .ORG defined)..in this case located at about D0h in code.

The following simple changes don't work:

mov DPTR,#STRING1
...where STRING1 is located at .ORG 0100h, 0500h, etc. for example.

1.Isn't your program longer than 256 bytes? What if you mov DPH.#10h and locate your data at 1000h?
A: My code is only 207 bytes long..to CFh...ORG at any location seems to fail?
2. Try embedding the strings in the code..
A: Yes, it works (in the program I'm cleaning up) but again, but kind of defeats my purpose.

So DPL,#x & DPH,#x is not problem, must not be retreiving value of .ORG/string location to DPTR? But .ORG string values are shown in my HEX file by emulator! Ever heard of this? I'm thinking it's somehow related to using this PROM-based bootloader board..buts loads code to a separate 64k EEPROM!

*sigh*