The kernels that Borislav posted where not gzipped so that is not the problem. My guess is that Netscape under windows translated the line feeds in the kernel file (downloaded it as ascii) which Netscape under unix did not do. I did get the smiley face from your program and I could connect fine on com1 via hyperterminal. I don't normally run windows (I just happened to be running it at the time so I thought I would try your program) so I am not sure what Netscape's default behavior for things like this is. In short, I am more that willing to blame it on windows or Netscape if no one else has seen this problem with your program. Would it be possible for your program to verify the kernel file before uploading it? If you wanted to try you could duplicate some of the functionality of the unix 'file' program to verify that it is a kernel file before uploading. Probably more trouble that it is worth though. -Mike