When I tell Arachne to dial, it does, and it logs on, but then it claims it can't load its ppp driver (it's right there) and sometimes it says it's out of "environment space" (it has *infinite* RAM!)

Please tell me how to fix this.

Arachne is designed to run under **-DOS and requires 550K conventional memory, running RAMBOOST will launch the Memory Configurator, and 600k+ should be achievable.

http://www.pldos.pl/pcdos/psm952sa.htm

Also maybe try the Arachne Forum as well:

http://www.cisnet.com/glennmcc/aqc

Also you forgot to mention what type of Modem, you could always use the LSPPP Dialer instead of the DOSPPP Dialer.

I have Himem installed. When I go to a DOS prompt under windows CHKDSK says I have 562,000 bytes free. That's enough, and I have run Arachne under windows before with no problems. Using DOS without windows CHKDSK says I have 578,816 bytes free, and arachne does the same thing.

One of the weirdest things about Arachne is that it doesn't know RAM is rewritable. One problem I had with it before was if I exited the program and tried to start it again without rebooting, it said I didn't have enough RAM. It had used up what was there and wouldn't use it again.

Now, when I first start Arachne and click on Dial, miniterm appears to dial, but gets stuck on login: . It won't login automaticaly if that is selected, and the only key that works is Esc. After Esc, it goes to the "unable to load ppp driver" screen that "flies" (crawls) to the dialer in 10 seconds, succesfully logs in, gets ppp characters on the sreen, and when I press F7, says "out of environment space" and goes back to the previous "too stupid to load ppp driver" screen.

If you get "out of environment space" error, you have to increase it. It is done in your config.sys file. Find the line which starts with "shell=". It should be something like: "shell=command.com c:\ /e:512 /p" (it could be different if you use 4dos for example ...).
parameter /e is the environment - change it to a higher value like 4096 (bytes).
This is the space for system environmental variables - anything set with "set" command, some programs also set those variables - obviously Arachne is one of them.