geez...this just isn't gonna work out I guess... went back to a 2.2.10 kernel (Oct 1) and tried that...it gripes about not finding any window-manager (yes, fvwm2 and fvwm95 ARE both installed and in the window-managers file too)...but it did start up...so I ran the wm manually and actually did see X working on it... but, with this kernel, no network! nothing works, not even ping.. paul