after cruising sys/arch/sun3/sun3/conf.c, i discovered that for sun3 these
devices require:
mknod stdin  c 23 0  ; chmod 666 stdin
mknod stdout c 23 1  ; chmod 666 stdout
mknod stderr c 23 2  ; chmod 666 stderr

and all appears to be well with compress/uncompress.

-- 
[ Jim Mercer   Reptilian Research  merce@iguana.reptiles.org  +1 416 410-5633 ]
[  when you eat hot chiles you should follow them with some ice cream.  Then, ]
[  when you're sitting on the toilet the next day and the burn commences, you ]
[  can holler "Come onnnnnn, ice cream!"-- from the chile-heads mailing list  ]