Chuck advised me:

> You could have typed 'boot netbsd.vax' and it should have booted. It will 
> probably not be able to figure out the root device.

Unfortunately not.

>> NetBSD/vax boot [May 23 2000 16:14:54] <<
>> Press any key to abort autoboot 4
Press '?' for help
> boot netbsd.vax
nfs_open: must mount first.

Same with the most recent CD image I could find (
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/iso/vaxcd.iso) which comes up and
identifies itself as November 17 2000.

Interestingly, executing the nonsense command "boot boot.vax" causes 
the emulator to segfault.

--
Dan Shearer
Open Source Manager
dan@tellurian.com.au