Hi!
First I've build ruby on Windows NT 4.0 with Visual C++ 6.0.
There was no problems.

c:\ruby>ruby -v
ruby 1.6.3 (2001-03-19) [i586-mswin32]

Second I check the build with:
nmake test

There was 1 failure:
...
clone
ok 1
ok 2
ok 3
ok 4
marshal
not ok marshal 1 -- ./sample/test.rb:1063
pack
ok 1
ok 2
ok 3
math
...

Then I extract the marshal-test:

c:\ruby>cat test.rb
def fact(n)
  return 1 if n == 0
  f = 1
  while n>0
    f *= n
    n -= 1
  end
  return f
end

$x = [1,2,3,[4,5,"foo"],{1=>"bar"},2.5,fact(30)]
$y = Marshal.dump($x)
if ($x == Marshal.load($y))
        print "Okay!"
end

And now -- SURPRISE -- it was okay!
WHAT'S WRONG? Why fail the same test in ./sample/test.rb?
Any idea?

Thanks, Volkmar.