Bob,

>Have you edited /etc/rc.conf? Are you doing a boot or boot -a rather than
>a boot -s?  I believe these items are mentioned in the FAQ. 
>
Certainly...and I'm doing boot 3/rz0/netbsd at the monitor prompt...

>> 2) What is the proper response to the prompt "Terminal type"?  No matter
>>    what I tell it, if I have a file in an editor (vi, joe, whatever) the
>
>rcons - definitely a FAQ but I am not sure it's in the FAQ.
>
Not so; tried that...its not there!  neither is wscons...

>> 3) How to stop messages from corrupting the root window when in X?  Will
>>    being logged in as my user account stop this maybe?
>
>This is the same as any Unix platform.  Make a console xterm, 
>e.g. xterm -c. 
>
oh, cool...I'll see if it works...I get plenty of them blowing X all to
hell and back...
>
>Uh, is your /usr filesystem mounted?? 
>
of course, I'd never get into X if it wasn't...
>
>Don't sweat it. Becoming your own sysadmin isn't hard, really - it just
>requires a bit of documentation reading and investigation.
>
Hmmm, well where is it?  I've read everything there is, which isn't alot
on the pmax page...but apparently there's more that applies....I'm glad 
to hear that...

>The great thing about NetBSD is it's BSD Unix - it's pretty well
>understood and documented. In general, things work the way they do on
>any other BSD system. Occasionally, the work a lot better!
>
I have alot to learn about BSD derived systems thats for sure...but I 
find it rather a tuff pull compared to what I'm more familiar with..which
is no surprise...I get frustrated with the shell, the klunkiness of it and
especially line editing, that sort of thing...the syntax...but all thats
no surprise I suppose since I'm not a BSD type person...thats why I'm 
givin' it a shot.  I was disappointed there was no bash, for example in
the pmax packages...not that I'd be able to get it installed successfully
with this other mess goin' on...but

Right now I'm trying to add another disk...and moving stuff around to get
it to where I can support the Standard install...got stuck with disklabel.
the no label on the disk, so you can't write one to it...never did get it
rignt, so I just used sysinst to do it...I suspect that I'm gonna have to
have another go at an install...and start over with this, because its a
mess the way it is...I have two Maxine's, and I wanted to use the other
disk so this machine had more space available...but its only 200M so I'm
using another disk from one of my other machines that had MkLinux on it.

Paul