Hmmmmm maybe I should have mentioned this earlier
I found this in Socket.pm:

local($SIG{ALRM}) = $timeout ? sub { undef $fh; }
                               : $SIG{ALRM} || 'DEFAULT';
[download]

Still... There is no reason why MY alarm handler (defined)
was/is overwritten

Eeehm, as for original code...: The code jcwren
posted above gives me the same results, and it's
pretty clear code...
Has anyone else tried his code ?

Oh, I'm running on a sun sparc ultra4, SunOs 5.6,
Perl 5.004_04...

Code from jcwren gives me the same 'Alarm Clock' on
RH Linux 2.0.36, i386, also Perl 5.004_04