Urmel (and anyone else),
What you have commented upon has nothing to do with my problem. When you use NIOS2 with uClinux you typically use GUEST ftp login.
"ftp" with no password and you can only work in "/home/ftp" defined in "passwd" So I changed the "passwd" file to point to my compact flash.
so i am logged on properly and i can transfer files for awhile. MORE INFORMATION --
I added a user in "passwd" and loggeed on to FTP as a user so that the FTP transactions WERE NOT as a GUEST and I still get the same problem.
Thanks in advance.