I second the advice to not fear configuring kernels. The main thing is to first do no harm. If you have a working kernel, by all means, save it. I am sure we have all had new kernels that just sat there doing nothing on boot because it either turned out that that kernel wasn't suitable for our system or that we made a terrible mistake in configuring it. I once configured a new kernel for a Dell system that uses a SCSI bus for the hard drive. I forgot about that because I also use a Dell system which is very similar to this one only with an IDE drive. The result was a paper weight of a computer until I could boot an old kernel and get the system back to life again. The biggest problem you will have in setting up kernels, at times, is finding out enough about your hardware to answer the questions properly. If you do that, you've taken care of the worst part of the whole thing. Right now, I have one kernel that boots perfectly on a Dell system, but which doesn't work quite right with sound, and another kernel which works better with sound, but which is obsolete. That kind of thing is what you will often-times run in to in the kernel game. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Network Operations Group
