While these 2 modules may not be the only ones you want / need, and that having your own source-based distribution has its advantages, I suggest you take a look here for DBI related ppm's for Win32. Those packages are frequently up-to-date with CPAN. There are also lots of other ppm repositories that can be of use, one of them is even run by a monk and accepts "packaging" requests under some conditions.
thanks for the links. I had come across those repositories (the monk's, btw, hasn't been operational in a while... I remember it down a couple months ago when I first tried it). however what I can't seem to find is a working ppd of DBD::Sybase... even http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips/8xx-builds-only/Windows/
doesn't have one. which is why I'd love to be untethered from ActiveState...
There are some PPDs at http://www.peppler.org/downloads/ActiveState/.
An alternative that I've found to be quite nice is to install cygwin - gives you a nice bash shell, and the Unix build/make instructions work out of the box (well, mostly).