I don't know any of you saw this, but in light of the problems people are having using Pd with Tcl 8.4.2, these excerpts from the ChangeLog might help track down the problem:
* Multiple signs no longer accepted as valid integer. [string is integer ++1] => 0 *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* Command rename traces get fully-qualified names. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* [pkg_mkIndex -load] now does a case-insensitive match. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* Make canvas item coordinate list handling consistent to stop segfaults. Cannot now create items without coordinates. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* Make %-substitutions for events only read data out of the event structure when that field is valid for that event type. *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
.hc