>Uhmmm... nope. I'm writing this under a "homegrown" Emacs 20.3
>redirected to a VXT2000+ qon a 1.4 based installation. I had some
>minor quirks getting this beast up and running but AFAIK it seems to
>be rock solid. Additional info:

When you say ``homegrown'', does that mean you're using the NetBSD
package system?  If you're not, does your emacs `unexec' or does it
take 45-60 seconds to load in all the e-lisp each time it starts up?

It seems to be the unexec'd emacses which don't work.
IIRC, even the old 1.3.x binaries  show  the same symptom.