Thanks,

Yes the switches  were a typo, was tired this morning.

I got the rpc response, so bitcoin is running in server mode, I set the switch in the .conf file.
In the conf file I set the port to 8332. I assume the port you set for the Diablo command line is for the bitpool? In this case it's 8334 for bitcoinpool.com.

The error message below I assume is then for the *remote* bitcoin server in the pool? I can't think what else I'm doing wrong

Error: Can't connect to Bitcoin: Bitcoin disconnected during response

Getting 80K plus hashes now, assuming I get it to work.