Smarty and Internet Explorer issue

Hello, I've built a complex site (using various included templates) with form fields and data coming from various database tables. One drop-down-field is causing problems in IE6. It contains about 17.000 values (I know, that's not very fancy). IE is capable of dynamically creating and displaying this drop-down-list by using smarty's built-in function {html_options} or a customized function as follows: function smarty_function_make_options($params, &$smarty) { $options = '<select name="' . $params['name'] . '" class="' . $params['class'] . '" style="' . $params['style'] .'" onchange="' . $params['onchange'] . '">'; $options .= '<option>' . join('</option><option>',$params['options']) . '</option>'; $options .= '</select>'; $options = str_replace(">". $params['selected']," selected>" . $params['selected'], $options); echo $options; } But combined with all the other selects and features smarty won't load the page in IE. Firefox loads quick and withaut fault. I've cached the options-array using PEAR::CACHE_Lite, but this makes no difference in IE. If I try to display the options as array {$pn_options}, no problem. But neither way of manipulating an assigned array (of that size) in order to get the select-box works, nor does writing the entire string (<select>...</select>) in PHP and assigning as is... I also checked wheter the size of the resulting page would be to big for that certain browser by loading it in Firefox and saving as html-file. This way I could open it in IE. That's why I assume it is a smarty-related problem... Thanks for any advise, Peggy