Finally got some time to look further into this (and learn a little C in the process). Thanks for your input. I used Brian's tutorial to prove the spi driver was installed and working properly, it also lead me to using an old hard drive jumper link to short out the serial out and in pins for debuggi...

Hi waltermixxx, Are the kernel modules you need currently loaded? What is the output of: dmesg | grep spi you are looking for the bcm2708_spi module being loaded, if it's not you can try making sure they are loaded at boot as I mentioned above (you will need to reboot!) -commented out the blacklist ...

Yes , sorry I should have made that clearer, I meant the GPIO header (P1) I used for power!
I'll edit my first post to make it clearer.

First of all hello to everybody as this is my first post! I received my Raspberry Pi a few days a go and would like to have a play using the SPI bus. I have a AT25512 EEPROM to hand and have decided to make it work, the only problem is I don't know how....yet! I work in electronics so have a good id...