I solved the problem by messing with the boot flags. The
following allowed me to type at the login prompt:

boot /1 <device>

I had to manually boot netbsd, and accept the defaults
at the prompts once the kernel was up. But now I can
login to both the VS3100 and MV3100. The former appears
to be either an m30 or m40, with 24Mb of RAM and the
console/graphic mode selector *behind* the back panel.
It came with two 110Mb hard disks, so I'll be on the
lookout for a couple of 1Gb replacements.

The only remaing issue I have is that the console
output sometimes gets garbled while scrolling. For
instance, if I do an 'ls -l' on a large number of
files, then once it starts scrolling I get reversed
question mark character and garbage. Is the serial
output getting garbled because the baud rate's to
high? This happens on both machines with a VT320 or
a VT420.

Apart from that, NetBSD/vax seems very rock solid.
I'm amazed at how well it performs on what is
quite old hardware, which I guess is a reflection
of the quality of DEC kit, and the close ties between
BSD Unix and the Vax.

Chris
--
chris.wareham@iosystems.co.uk (work)
cwareham@btinternet.com (home)