ach!!

Hi, I'm wasting time to try to implement two simple features for my php script (I'm on *nix box + php3 as cgi + apache): 1)- I'm trying to modify this url http://mysite/a.php3?myVar=myVal to http://mysite/a.php3/myVal but all my solution (based on same online howto) doesn't work. Tipically the error is: unable to open /www/mysite/a.php3/myVal. No input file in/on line 0. Anyone could confirm me that running php as cgi doesn't allow me to use the second url example? Or better, anyone could show me the way to do it? 2) - I know that is possible to modify some php3.ini's values to writing in a .htaccess file, e.g.: php3_auto_append_file /home/mysite/www/file_to_include.txt But using this code, cause always an Internal Error Server (in a win98 box+php3+apache too) ... anyone could help me? Any suggestion are very welcome. Many thanks in advance. max