AppleWin modeming trouble

["OOAEOOMSNR" <abuse@aol.com>]

I've never been much into emulators versus actual hardware, but tonight I
tried to use a ZLink DSK image with the latest release of AppleWin.  It
failed miserably.  ZLink did not even appear to start.  The disk image
booted to a menu, but when I selected ZLink, the program appeared to try to
load and I froze on a "black screen of death".   I know this could be for
any number of reasons - bad disk image, com port settings off, whatever -
but before I try to research it, I was hoping some of you might mention
whether you've had positive experiences using a PC-platform A2 emulator with
a modem.