This is weird - just plain won't run the code?

[britlion]

I'm going to file this under "weird"

It works for me now as well. I don't actually own a real spectrum I was, and still am, running it under spectaculator 8.0. It crashed last night each time. Today, it behaves....

Now I'm really baffled.

Could it be you were running it on a non standard mode (e.g. +3, +2A, another clone)??

Maybe. Not recoverable now. But it's a thought - perhaps it was left in an odd mode!