On a possibly slightly related note, I took the weekend (Jan 23/99)
weekly tar-balls home on a CD-R last night and built a GENERIC kernel
on my PC164SX which died in a similar fashion (machine trap/panic just
after the vga attach line (something like "wscons at vga0")).  I've
always had trouble with the STB PowerGraph 64V (S3 Trio 64+) video card
on this system with NetBSD - to the point where I now have an old VT220
terminal on a serial port as the console... so I thought I'd pull this
video card out completely and see if the kernel will boot (I realize
the crash may have nothing to do with the video stuff).  I can collect
the actual output of the crash if desired - but I thought before I forgot
I'd add an (admittedly vague) data point.  -- Ken