>>>*Many* thanks for your guidance, it is *greatly* appreciated!
>>>
>>
>>you're welcome!
>>
>>i know of the struggles installing packages on 'little' machines as i
>>did a bunch of work on an Amiga 1200 w/68040 turboboard ;)
> 
> [look of *almost* disbelief] w00000t? Darn, I thought my little project
> was...errrr...challenging :)

try that on an older VAX ;) a 68040 (especially my 40MHz one ;) is not 
that slow, it's quite between a fast 486 and a Pentium. a friend of mine 
runs a 1200 with 68060/66 on NetBSD :))

> 
> 
>>nevertheless, reading manuals is more than recommended -- but to make
>>your life easier, there's pkgsrc. keep that in mind, and you're halfway
>>there...
> 
> 
> Well that's (usually) why it takes me so long to get stuff working. I
> read way too much and take a lot of (too much) time thinking stuff
> through. Colleagues have often said; "just download, ./configure, make
> [etc] and figure out the problems only when you see the problematic
> output" I dunno, there's redeeming features in both approaches I think.

well, it's for sure better to know too much than lacking knowledge of 
what you're doing, meaningless of whether you use pkgsrc (or another 
packaging system) or not...

> 
> One of the largest initial problems was grabbing a pkgsrc that was
> commensurately dated with my 1.6.1 cobalt port. A newer pkgsrc would
> _not_ install. I had to use:
> ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.6.1/source/sets/
> which seemed to have stuff that was at the right version level for this
> port....or at least kernel sources and a pkgsrc that *would* install.
> 
> 
>>btw: altho the last few weeks showed (at least to me?) a partly
>>out-of-dated pkgsrc-wip, there's a site where you can find apps which
>>didn't made it to pkgsrc yet:
>>
>>http://pkgsrc.netbsd.se
>>
>>that's wip - work in progress
>>
> 
> This is bigtime help indeed, I have the feeling I'm gonna be visiting
> them quite a lot in the near future.
> 
> Once again, *many* thanks for the guidance and remarks. Both greatly
> appreciated! :-)
> 
> -Colin