you can change the value of the HALT variable at the chevron.. i dont 
remember whic his which. i think 0 is halt, 1 is boot, i dont remember 
what 2 and 3 are but theyre different.. auto reboot or something, as 
opposed to regular boot? dunno. 
at least thats how it is on a vs4k60. 
isildur

On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, Jochen Kunz wrote:
> Unfortunately, if a VAXstation is configured to use serial console
> (S3...) autoboot is disabled.
> Maybe, when you set the PROM variables ready for auto boot and you
> disable serial console, you may be able to auto boot. But you will 
> have the console prompt on the graphics head and NetBSD will (hopefully)
> switch to serial console once the kernel is booted. (Never tested this
> myself.) And you must have keyboard / mouse / monitor connected 
> to prevent PROM POST errors. 
> 
> Do you get a strange "?? SYS" error diagnostic code from the PROM 
> POST when the machine is powered on? 

this would definitely cancel an autoboot.