Sonnie,

Check your /var/log/secure on the SlackWare system...see if a message
isn't there from bootp that tells you something about the request 
having been seen at all (start at the beginning.. :)

I have seen cases where the request is seen, but the DECstation sends
an IP address of all zero's with the bootp...use tcpdump to see if you
can actually catch the request packet to verify the hardware address
is being sent properly...

and this may impact what I've seen here (5000/25's) and that is, I have
to run the bootp daemon manually, and not from inetd!  Otherwise, it gets
out of sync with the DECstation for whatever reason, and nothing happens
(the DEC never sees the response, or the Linux box doesn't...which I'm 
not sure).  This is using RH 5.2.

if you run the daemon manually, then check ps and its not there, it 
doesn't
like your bootptab!

and, running it manually and changing the degug mode (-d 4) will give you
some info to ensure that it is reading the bootptab and it is being 
interpreted correctly...if its not, the daemon won't run...it'll exit
immediately and won't respond to the DECstation's request at all....this
might actually cause a message in the /var/log/secure of somthing like
"refused connect from 0.0.0.0" from the bootp daemon...

Paul