Okay PodMaster thanks for your help. I tried the patches and arrived at the same place. I *think* I have worked out

1. How to build a version of 5.8.1 with BCC5.5 that works. No large file support or PerlIO.
2. I'm part way through tracking down the appropriate borland api's to enable large file support.

I haven't begun looking into the PerlIO stuff yet but I will.

If I succeed, I will post the results here *if* anyone else indicated that they are interested.

<rant>

Ah! Email lists, email servers, email wrappers.

No good to me, I won't use them/those/that.

Why do the same people that bitch about spam, contribute to the network degradation by insisting on sending everything to everyone? Why can't the information simply be placed in a central place and when I'm ready to look at it, I go look at it in that central place.

When I want to contribute, I send an email to that central place and it gets added to the list of information and the next time other people look, they see it.

Bah! I give up.

</rant>