found the cause of the lockup... the bfe driver is conflicting with the fwe driver... learned by trial and error... had to recompile the kernel not to include the ethernet firewire driver... oks lang, as i dont even have a firewire device for now... so far hadnt had luck with the sis winmodem using the ltmdm and mwave port... wireless arriving hope it works fine... still wasnt able to test the digicam-usb and memory card reader...