>>  I had just tried to build a pmax kernel on my AlphaPC 164 last night
>> (using mipsel-netbsd), and ran into the same problem.  I increased the
>> stacklimit to 32M and the datalimit to > 1000M, and it still failed.
>
> FWIW, I just successfully built a pmax kernel on i386 using
> mipsel-netbsd.  An 64-bit problem in gcc somewhere?

I experienced silimar synptoms in cross-compiling on NetBSD/alpha.
Long time ago, I tried to build sparc64 (LP64, or might be ILP32)
kernel on then-current of NetBSD/alpha.  Toolchain was built
successfully, but compiler failed to produce a certain .o file.  The
compiler started consuming memory until all of swap space is
exhausted.  After several attemps, I abandoned to use NetBSD/alpha for
cross-compiling purpose.  It was as old story as 1.5 or 2 year ago.
Machine was 100Mhz AlphaStation 4/200. 

Tohru Nishimura