Apologies for repeated and now obsolete messages.  My ISP (@home) has
notoriously bad email and sometimes ends up sending repeated emails or sending
them 2 days later. FWIW, the '98 G3 Powerbook is working flawlessly. 
Force-rebooting it erased my Open Firmware (v2.01) settings.  Rebooting into
MacOS, running a floppy with SystemDisk and resetting OF fixed it (thanks
Charlie).   The problem occurred because I typed 
'halt' and the machine froze.  So instead I use 'shutdown -p now' which brings
the machine back to the OF prompt.  And from there I can type 'shut-down' to
make it power down completely.  Anyway, now all is running well.
Thanks for the help, for the list and for the excellent docs on the web-page
and in the list archives.
Peace
Jeff