kernel menus

[Marvin Stodolsky <stodolsk@rcn.com>]

Trying to keep Lucent WinModem drivers available to Users for
kernels-2.4.nn, now 2.4.2, I've run into menu config problems

My 
# ls -l /usr/include
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           29 Mar  1 14:46 /usr/include ->
kernel-headers-2.1.17/include

While I can do the ancient:
  make config

I've broken capability to 
  make menuconfig 
  make xconfig
with complaints like:

# make menuconfig
rm -f include/asm
( cd include ; ln -sf asm-i386 asm)
make -C scripts/lxdialog all
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.2/scripts/lxdialog'
gcc -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -DLOCALE 
-DCURSES_LOC="<curses.h>" -c -o checklist.o checklist.c
In file included from checklist.c:24:
dialog.h:22: sys/types.h: No such file or directory
dialog.h:23: fcntl.h: No such file or directory
dialog.h:24: unistd.h: No such file or directory
dialog.h:25: ctype.h: No such file or directory
dialog.h:26: stdlib.h: No such file or directory
dialog.h:27: string.h: No such file or directory
dialog.h:29: curses.h: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [checklist.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.2/scripts/lxdialog'
make: *** [menuconfig] Error 2

Dropping down to a 2.2.17 boot ( the current) doesn't help.

Any suggestions?

My alternative boot kernels are 2.2.17, 2.4.0.,2.4.1,2.4.2.,
2.2.18pre21-idepci

Please email to me direct.
MarvS