>    ***	Story 1) I rebooted the machine to BSD last night (using the
> original 1.0B kernel), and was rewarded with a login prompt.

So the system is panicing now on a kernel that was working fine?  Check
your hardware configuration and run filesystem checks on all mountable
filesystems.  This almost sounds like flaky memory, too.

There isn't any reason that an old kernel should stop working just
because you booted a newer one once or twice.

As for the new one not working, could you try starting with a
GENERIC config and see if that one fails in the same manner
(illegal instruction).

-allen

-- 
Allen Briggs - end killing - allen.briggs@bev.net ** MacBSD == NetBSD/mac68k **
   Where does all my time go?  <a href="http://www.netbsd.org/">Guess.</a>