You're definitely a little on your own here, because I never actually use USB ..... Is the gnu.io.rxtx.properties file in the exit/lib folder of the VM you are using? You might want to try setting up your serial connections in rxtx properties and do straight serial first -- there are a lot fewer things that can go wrong, and it will absolve rxtx from guilt. If you can't get serial going, you'll never get USB going.

Not sure what's up with the 1.4/1.3 change in accelerators. The accelators in the new versions will all be internationalized, and they're mostly rewritten, so maybe they'll work better when I actually do a jEmplode build.

Soups on the Empeg should stay up-to-date. Things potentially get weird if you switch between jEmplode and Emplode, but it's supposed to handle that too (it will rescan your soups at download-time and remove things that aren't supposed to be there anymore and add new ones that are)

ms