>       Random, random, random thought - what happens if you 'unlimit'
>       before running the X server? (I don't expect it to fix it, but
>       its a hunch :)

David, you should have random thoughts more often!  This particular one
seems to have solved my immediate problem.  I tried hard to break it this
morning, and couldn't.  Does this indicate something that now needs to be
done to 'Xsun' .. or what ?

'unlimit' is not actually available to me under 'ksh' so I used the following
code segment:
   for P in d s l m n p ; do
     ulimit -$P `ulimit -H$P`
   done

   diff ulimit.before ulimit.after
   3,4c3,4
   < data(kbytes)         65536
   < stack(kbytes)        512
   ---
   > data(kbytes)         262144
   > stack(kbytes)        262144
   7,9c7,9
   < locked memory(kbytes) 4350
   < process(processes)   80
   < nofiles(descriptors) 64
   ---
   > locked memory(kbytes) 13052
   > process(processes)   532
   > nofiles(descriptors) 1772