Michael had an offline discussion with someone from Sybase. They suggested that I try building the "firstapp" Open Client sample program and change the select to a non-existent table (to trigger a 208 error), to see if I get the msg text. I did that, and here's the output:

Server message:
        number(5701) severity(10) state(2) line(0)
        Server name: SQLLAM01
        Changed database context to 'master'.

Server message:
        number(208) severity(16) state(1) line(1)
        Server name: SQLLAM01
        pubs2..authors not found. Specify owner.objectname or use sp_h
+elp to check whether the object exists (sp_help may produce l.
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Since I see the message text, I'm guessing that my Open Client installation is working fine. Does that mean it's a Perl or DBI::Sybase problem?

Thanks.