asterisk users - Aug 2005 - zaphfc HFC-S in nt mode but no dial tone after pickup

I have installed a HFC-S card in nt mode according to the documentation 
on voip-info.org and it works quite well except for two problems:

1. When I pick up the phone I no not get a "dial tone" indicating that
I
can start dialing but asterisk seems to jump automatially to extension s.

2. When I try to create an extension starting with * (like _*XX) 
asterisk also goes straight into s instead of executing _*XX.

Can anybody help me with these?

Cheers,
Arik