Can't get lathe to Feed

Please have a look at the sample Lathe program below. Can anyone tell me why it can't get the machine to feed in G01?
The spindle starts, and the axis move to position in rapid (G0), but then it just sits there and waits!

I think maybe its something to do with G17 and G18.
G18 is in the header of the program, but it swaps back to G17 after I press Start.
If I type G18 in MDI it changes as required. But as soon as I press Cycle Start in Auto, we are back to G17 !

Help. This is very silly & frustrating.

G0 G7 G18 G21 G40 G49 G54 G64 G90 G91.1 G95 G97 G99
G97S2500M4
G0X30.Z0.
G1X0.F500
G0Z2.
X26.
G0X12.
G1Z0.
X14.
G3X24.Z-5.R5.
G1Z-15.
G0X30.
X40.Z40.
M30

Usually this means that spindle-at -speed is not true, from the motion manual page:

spindle.M.at-speed IN BIT
Motion will pause until this pin is TRUE, under the following conditions: before the first
feed move after each spindle start or speed change; before the start of every chain of spin‐
dle-synchronized moves; and if in CSS mode, at every rapid->feed transition.

Are you saying its waiting for a feed back signal from the spindle?

Yes, that's the usual issue.

On very simple setups,, spindle-at-speed can simply be set true,
but normally it is seup in hal so its only true when the actual
spindle speed is close to the commanded speed, so cutting will
not start until the spindle is at the correct speed.

I get the same result from my test system which is not connected to a machine.
I fail to inform you that I have upgraded from 2.7 to 2.8, and I'm testing both live on the machine and at my test pc (neither have loop back from the spindle)
Any ideas ?

If you have no spindle speed feedback you would need to set spindle-at-speed
true in your hal file