....
> I guess I will have to live with 80x25 and an 1.5" of
> blank space on the top and on the bottom.

This is usually a BIOS setting - something like "Expand Console" or similar.

I've had it on a few of my old laptops - all HP OmniBooks. If all you
want is to run in
80x25 full screen, this should be enough.

>  Right now
> I'm using NetBSD 3.1 on this old laptop, and I will
> probably wait to use NetBSD 4.0 until it becomes the
> stable production ready branch. After I do a 4.0
> install I will look into recompiling the kernel to
> enable framebuffer.

It's quite slow with fb, though - especially scrolling - on high settings.
...
>

Chavdar Ivanov