hi paul, i had trouble compiling in the drivers/vital directory, but i felt i could safely comment this out and so i did. when i did "make modules_install" at one point Makefile tried to include /Makefile.inc, i presume because somehow $(PWD) became undefined. i hard coded the path into Makefile and with these changes it looked like everything went ok but with so many warnings concerning deprecated char** strings, i could easily missed an error or two. perhaps the compile did go successfully since often Make stops with an actual error. when i tried to run my old script from my bdi-4.51 system "x3.run", these are the results. i presume you expected some problems along these lines. inivar = plat/nonrealtime/bin/inivar INIFILE = x3.ini RS274NGC_PARAMFILE = generic.var starting emc... [sudo] password for sock: starting EMC MOTION PROGRAM -- quickstep... Can not find -sec TRAJ -var BLEND_TOL_REL -num 1 IO_BASE_ADDRESS 0x378 Can not find -sec EMCMOT -var QS_PINOUT -num 1 modprobe quickstep PERIOD=22000 STEPPING_TYPE=0 IO_BASE_ADDRESS=0x378 SHMEM_KE Y=100 FATAL: Error inserting quickstep (/lib/modules/2.6.24-16-rtai/extra/quickstep.k o): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg) can't install quickstep x3.ini was not changed. generic.var was not changed. these appear to be emc related lines from dmesg [299469.208370] quickstep: Unknown symbol fabs [299469.208459] quickstep: Unknown symbol sqrt [299469.208569] quickstep: Unknown symbol nano2count [299469.208643] quickstep: Unknown symbol rt_get_time [299469.208716] quickstep: Unknown symbol floor [299469.208808] quickstep: Unknown symbol rt_task_make_periodic [299469.208888] quickstep: Unknown symbol start_rt_timer [299469.209038] quickstep: Unknown symbol rt_printk [299469.209112] quickstep: Unknown symbol rt_task_delete [299469.209302] quickstep: Unknown symbol stop_rt_timer [299469.209376] quickstep: Unknown symbol rt_get_adr [299469.209449] quickstep: Unknown symbol cos [299469.209579] quickstep: Unknown symbol rt_shm_free [299469.209657] quickstep: Unknown symbol sin [299469.209731] quickstep: Unknown symbol rt_shm_alloc [299469.209861] quickstep: Unknown symbol rt_linux_use_fpu [299469.210105] quickstep: Unknown symbol rt_task_init [299469.210232] quickstep: Unknown symbol count2nano [299469.210306] quickstep: Unknown symbol rt_set_periodic_mode [299469.210387] quickstep: Unknown symbol acos [299469.210462] quickstep: Unknown symbol rt_task_wait_period as always i am open to advice. thanks djs