I tried a good Zoom external. All the modems worked fine on a homebuilt asus p5a sys using a k6-3 and the same os. I think maybe lightning or a power surge caused this MoBo to do this.. Linux would install and run just fine. I think the only thing I havent tried is running that zoom external while the thing was loaded with linux. Gonna go put Mandrake 9.1 on it for one final test. Thanks