Johnny Billquist pointed out to me that there seems to be a problem
with the -current VAX boot programs. Since /usr/mdec/xxboot is
byte-for-byte identical between 1.6 and -current, I figured the
problem had to be with /usr/mdec/boot.  I cp'd the 1.6 /usr/mdec/boot
to the root directory of the disk, and now it boots just fine.

Chris Wareham wrote:
> A purely off the top of my head suggestion, but what is the boot flag
> set to? On my VLC "show bflg" gives me:
> 
> BFLG = 00000001
> 
> I then boot off the internal drive, but have to manually enter the name
> of the kernel at the NetBSD boot prompt:
> 
> boot netbsd
>
> I also have to confirm the device mount points further on in the boot
> sequence. I'm not sure why this manual intervention is necessary, but
> otherwise all keyboard input is ignored once NetBSD's booted.

It now autoboots fine for me with BFLG = 0.  With BFLG = 1, it prompts
for the kernel name and mount points.

<ragge@ludd.luth.se> wrote:
> You should do "SET HALT 3", then the machine will halt instead of just
> reboot which may be more useful.

SHOW HALT said it was already set to 3.  When I was still trying to
use the -current boot loader, it sometimes halted and sometimes looped
the way I showed in my previous mail; I never figured out why it
didn't behave consistently.  When it did halt, it looked like this:

    >>> b   

    -DKA0
    ?06 HLT INST
      PC= 00000003 PSL= 041F0009

Thank you all for your help.
-- 
Andreas Gustafsson, gson@gson.org