>
> 3.0, last updated about half a year ago
>
> I'm finding some VM tuning references on the internet
> that talk about per process memory limits.  I haven't
> read/digested that info yet.  I'll post to this list
> what comes of that.
>
>   

ok, because your SS20 has nearly the same configuration like mine.
There was a problem if you use full memory config on a sun4m system.
This can cause panics or strange problems on systems with more memory.
This is fixed in 3.1 or 4. But if your system runs stable, you could try 
this patch
and build a custom kernel version.

change the NKMEMPAGES_MAX_DEFAULT in src/sys/arch/sparc/include/param.h to:

#define NKMEMPAGES_MAX_DEFAULT  ((32 * 1024 * 1024) >> PAGE_SHIFT)

This solves my problem with my box, so I hope your problem too.

Best Regards
Stephan