> So, it would seem that the answer may be "maybe not" for plain
> 1.4.2 on an Alpha; you could try to update along the netbsd-1-4
> branch as shown above, though if you want to run code as close as
> possible to a release.

Thanks.  That was what I needed.

I got an updated version of if_ti.c from -release and built a system. 

No crashes so far, but there are some performance quirks that I don't 
understand (yet?).