Spoke too soon.  My "rsh"/"tar" combo hung out to dry, maybe because of all
	the "invalid packet size" errors; but what's worse is that the console has
	gone all wonky on me keyboard-wise - lots of repeating keys, or missed keys,
	and general weirdness that wasn't in 1.5.  (like hitting characters but having
	it spit out previously-typed characters that were typed before, like, uh,
	a root password)

1.5 does not have a driver for the console, so it uses the firmware for
I/O.  I suppose you never noticed that none of the function keys worked
on 1.5.

-current uses a real driver for the keyboard and mouse, however due to
some undetermined reason it sometimes gets into a funny state.  (This does
not happen when X is running, but at the moment the X server only runs on
cgsix cards.)

Eduardo