well, it turns out that having the PRESTOserve card plugged in is what was
causing the machine to panic.  i find this odd since the install.ecoff kernel
that i installed with worked fine.  anyway, i think that "not supported" and
"will cause your system to panic if plugged in" are two entirely different
things and should be documented as such.

does anybody know why the PRESTOserve card causes the machine to panic?  i'd
like to take a stab at getting the thing to work., since i think there is a
lot of potential for this thing.

X even works without a hitch.  which brings up the point, is the accelerated
portion of the Xserver scheduled to be MFCed from /alpha any time soon?

i have one problem with the video console however, and it isn't a big thing,
just mildly annoying.  everything goes about 1/8-1/4" past the left of the
usable screen cutting off the first character of every line.  with X this is
even less of a problem, but i'm curious how this can be fixed.

now i need to clean the keyboard so the space bar works right (without having
to pound it a couple times to get a space)

-b