Metaball Emission

Hi, I can set a metaball as the object to emit in Blender 2.49, but not in Blender 2.5.2. That is, the ball particles only show up when the original metaball is in Edit Mode, and no particles are rendered. I haven’t turned rendering off for the particle system, because halos render just fine.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
YottaFlop.