In message <19980510003430.33752@acheron.middleboro.ma.us>, Mason Loring Bliss writes:
>Hi! I've finally taken the plunge and put my NetBSD box on my desk. 
a most excellent move I must say!

>
>First, I can't figure out how to get a blinking cursor. This obviously
>isn't a live or die problem, but it would be nice to have control over
>my cursor.
don't know about this one.

>Second, while I can use my backspace key at my shell prompt and within
>vi, when I use it, for instance, inside of less to back up if I've mis-
>typed something in a search string, or, for instance, if I use it while
>catting directly to a file, or during a huge number of other tasks, I
>get ^H. The delete key erases this, but I'm more comfortable using the
>backspace. (I have no such difficulties when telnetted in from the Mac.)

use xmodmap to remap the backspace key to delete.
The command would be:

xmodmap -e "keysym BackSpace = Delete"

This says "take the key(s) which was (were) assigned to BackSpace
and make them act as Delete instead".

You can also put something like the following in your .xinitrc 
file (if using startx) or .xsession (if using xdm).

if [ -r $HOME/.xmodmaprc ]; then
  xmodmap .xmodmaprc
fi


and create a .xmodmaprc file with the line
keysym BackSpace = Delete

in it.

You may want to read the xmodmap man page too.

See also xev for help on seeing the current keymaps.

Hope this helps.

-- Dan