More info...

Argh.  I need to find a copy of sup that works, or get a copy of the
latest kernel somewhere...  lamp seems to have disappeared the night i
wanted to get it...also I need to figure out how to compile the kernel
without having to watch it =)

ANYway...

- I've found that the 1.2-Release kernel is *much* more stable than the
1.2C kernel, and have been using the 1.2 kernel to do tar extracts (if
not NFS =)

- The current 3/16 snapshot kernel crashes on heavy writes to the disk. 
 Reading from disk seems to work correctly.  Sems to work a lot better
than the 3/6 snapshot kernel (did anything change???)

(on console)
ftp/get:            fail
compile:        pass
tar extract:        fail
ar:             pass
strip large binary: fail
run X:          pass
dump(8) to nfs: pass

(remote)
nfs write to pmax box: pass (10K/sec or so, but at least it doesn't crash =)
nfs read from pmax box: pass
ftp get from pmax box: pass
ftp put to pmax box: fail

I hope this helps someone who is very familiar with the code, until I
learn enough of the kernel to hack it...
-bc