tnx cs... just got home from work and was going to figure out the math on this one, but you beat me to it. i figured the base bias must have been a bit high if he was getting close to nothing on the output, and that voltage divider looked a bit strange, except the emitter resistor was also 10k, which would provide local degeneration to the point where the transistor might be inside the linear range. if there's 4.5V on the base, the emitter voltage will be about 3.8V, so the emitter current is 380uA, the collector current is 378uA, and the base current is 2uA (380ua/178(the beta of the transistor model)). since the collector current is 380uA, the collector voltage is at 9-3.78=5.22V. this approximates the results of the sim itself which came up with 2.16uA base current, 380uA collector current, and 382uA emitter current. there's about 1.4V between collector and emitter. the transistor isn't in saturation, but it's not far from it.