annonymous Monk, thanks for your response and the handy links...
yes i have googled till i dropped.
Sadly for me, i have visited them all before and i have tried them all and much more. i have installed and reinstalled multiple versions of mysql, DBI and DBD in both architectures as well.
so just for completeness sake i will go over them again.
Frankly, i don't know the big picture of what i am trying to achieve, which makes me uncreative when i hit a problem
do you even know what the error means? that might help me see the big picture and be more independent.