Karol,
Thanks for the suggestions. I have an application compiled with SSP 1.0 and the same code compiled with SSP 1.1, using the same board. The first works and the second doesn't, so I'm pretty confident in the hardware settings.
I have compared the settings for Port => P7 => P706 between the two projects and they are identical: Output mode, GPIO. I'm a software guy so I'm not at all clear on what the pin configurations should be. Am I even looking in the right place?