CrocodilePundee

thanks for the quick turnaround, but i am one step ahead a ya! i installed devkit so i could force it to compile the gem from source, but it is...

ok, turns out i had the wrong version of devkit, but i fixed that and now i'm still failing: C:\DevKit>gem install lda-ruby --platform=ruby Temporarily enhancing PATH to include DevKit... Building...

looks like yours craps out in the same place as mine. could it really just be that GCC responds to the same source differently on pc vs mac?

C:\Ruby193>bin\gem environment RubyGems Environment: - RUBYGEMS VERSION: 2.0.3 - RUBY VERSION: 1.9.3 (2012-11-10 patchlevel 327) [i386-mingw32] - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: C:/Ruby193/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1 - RUBY EXECUTABLE: C:/Ruby193/bin/ruby.exe - EXECUTABLE DIRECTORY: C:/Ruby193/bin - RUBYGEMS...

never got any more info. if i knew more about compiling c i would poke around the code. maybe some day in the far away future. Thanks, John Moore Minds...