Actually, zipslack is in some ways a better choice than brlspeak if you are using zipslack-8.0, as brlspeak, at least when I used it for a while, was based on zipspeak-7.0 and much older. I'm not sure why there is no current version of zipspeak or brlspeak. However, I also used zipslack as a backup on my DOS hard drive for a while, and it worked fine with brltty installed. I'm not sure I understand why you didn't just do a full compile; zipslack should support that. I actually didn't have to compile it; it was on the same machine as my debian system, so I just mounted the dos hard-drive with zipslack on it, as umsdos not as dos very important, and typed install-brltty /mnt/linux. Then I went in and started it up manually by typing "brltty" after logging in as root, and put the code in the right place to start it up at boot, per the brltty manual. I am coming in late on this discussion, but will be glad to help you further if we can narrow down what your problem is. -- Cheryl