> I recall that sometime in the distant past I saw someone
> somewhere referring to some compatibility libraries that might
> be required.  Is this the case?

Yes.  You need the DU shared libraries and their shared object
loader (/sbin/loader) if I've understood correctly.

> I can't even find a man page for compat_osf1.  :-(

It's in -current (thus, on ftp.netbsd.org), and on the 1.4
release branch (the code which is about-to-be-1.4.2).

Regards,

- H=E5vard