> screen. Neither keyboard does anything useful, and both machines lock up and
> have to be rebooted.

I'm surprised the 486 locks up too.  Do you haveserial console and 
serial boot echo checked in the booter?  Do you have the right port 
(either the printer or the modem) selected?  I can see either of these 
things not being checked causing the symptoms you describe.

Just to make sure that your cabling is correct, you might want to boot 
the mac and run a communications program such as z-term.  On the 486, run 
the terminal program that you wish to view BSD through.  If the 
connections are right, (you'll also have to set both at 9600 baud 8N1) 
you should be able to type on one keyboard and see the typed text on the 
other computers screen, and vice versa.  If this connection isn't 
working before BSD, you won't make it work with bsd.  If it does work, 
check the things I listed in the first paragraph.
 

> Perhaps I should try a more recent kernel version?
> 
> Brian
> 
> 
> 

,oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
0       Adam Forsyth        0                                0
0  Luther College SPO 713   0   e-mail: forsytad@luther.edu  0
0    Decorah IA  52101      0    phone: (319) 387-2489       0
0oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo0
0    web: http://www.lookup.com/Homepages/73086/home.html    0
`oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo'