I seem to be able to reproduce this.  If I telnet to my NetBSD (1.0 nearly
current, amiga) system from the rest of the world, all is well.  However,
if I then 'su' for system maintenance, I start getting the traditional
stairstep.  Partially.  If I hit return, all is well, but 'ls | cat'
produces something like
/usr# ls | cat
bin
games
gnu
home
include
lib
libdata
libexec
listing
local
man
mdec
mysrc
     obj
        othersrc
                sbin
                    share
                         spool
                              src
                                 sys
                                    tmp

You get the idea.  The strange thing is that the wrapping sometimes starts
halfway through a list.

At least one user is reporting that this happens immediately on telnet.

We are confused.

-seebs