> Well, I've been having trouble getting a kernel to boot with both  ncrscsi
> and sbc lines commented out.

It compiles OK, but does not boot?  Where and how does it fail, crash,
or hang?
There is no good reason that a kernel lacking sbc0 or ncrscsi0 should
fail to boot.  It's a bug of one sort or another.  If you're having
problems with the presence or absence of 'options DDB' affecting your
kernel boots, this may be due to the same thing...  Whatever it is.

> Also, when building a kernel ( named "mykern"), if I go through the complete
> procedure and build a kernel that doesn't work; then I want to change that
> kernel's configuration file and try again, should I delete the
> ../compile/mykern directory completely before typing the "config mykern"
> command?

It's the safest course of action.  If I change the config, I always
clear out the compile directory and start from scratch, but I'm
paranoid...

> If I don't need to delete the old ../compile/mykern directory, do I still need
> to type "make depend" everytime I make a change to the "../conf/mykern"
> configuration file?

I think so--there are some things that 'make depend' builds that are
used by the build, I think.

-allen