Ok. I got it to work (sort-of)... I'm currently having problems with attributes (vertex and index buffer) when there are multiple subsets. I'm using PandaSoft's directx xporter and when I include the "materials" option I can get the correct number of subsets, but it doesn't render correctly. If I don't use the "materials" option, it renders fine, but it renders all of it in a single subset. This is bad because I want to use animation where the different subsets move independently.
I have ideas about how to work around this problem:
-- read the .x file as a text file and extract the info manually
-- separate the subsets into their own .x file and assemble them on load
-- *** figure out what I'm doing wrong and fix it (this is preferred)