Hi All, I'm replying to my own message since I got several responses and my problem is now solved. Unfortunately, the problem (& solution) turned out to be completely different.
When I first came up with 2.0.0, I tested the modem with minicom before attempting PPP. No problem. After compiling the new kernel, I didn't test minicom. I compiled the kernel a dozen times, sometimes using modules, sometimes not, etc. I kept getting "kernel doesn't support ppp". Well, while using 2.0.20, I decided to back up a step or 3 and try minicom. "Device /dev/cua1 is busy". Ah ha! After some playing and investigating, it turns out that xringd (which I need for something else but I'm currently not using) is grabbing the modem and not sharing nicely. If I stop xringd, PPP works great first time, every time, my chat scripts, etc, everything was OK. I use xringd and "kernel doesn't support ppp" (probably not the most intuitive error message ;-). Once things calm down a bit I'll e-mail the author of xringd and see if this is a known problem. It might just be kernel specific, or I need to recompile it and didn't know. I don't need it for a while so I'm not sweating it yet. (I'm not including my original message, e-mail me with questions) thanks for all of the replies, -- kc Kevin Conover: [EMAIL PROTECTED]