Ok, noticing there have been a lot of updates in sys/kern etc during 
easter, I cvs up'd tonight and rebuilt a complete distribution, put a copy 
of the TS7200 epe0 kernel in DESTDIR, MAKEDEV'd its /dev etc and 
TFTP-booted the corresponding netbsd-epe0.bin image. Still *boom* with an 
unmodified kernel.

   Noticed the following interesting tidbits:

   With default TS7200 kernel, at:

---8<---
nfs_boot: my_addr=192.168.1.12
nfs_boot: my_mask=255.255.255.0
nfs_boot: gateway=192.168.1.1
root on 192.168.1.6:/export/tsarm
/etc/rc.conf is not configured.  Multiuser boot aborted.
Enter pathname of shell or RETURN for /bin/sh:
---8<---

   If I press return or type /bin/sh, I get an immediate "locking against 
myself" panic as described earlier.

   If I type "/bin/ksh" instead... it works.

   With an "opions LOCKDEBUG" kernel, I don't seem to get a kernel panic at 
all; at least I can configure rc and customize some /etc files with vi, 
create a user and set passwords, set time with ntpdate, and boot all the 
way to multi-user and run "find /" on the entire fs without problems -- 
seems to work ok so far. Without it, I get the mutex error panic pretty 
much instantly on attempt to start multiuser boot.

   The lock the kernel is crashing on (via sys_read ... pipe_read) is:

  COMMON         0x00000000c0516d8c      0x118 kern_synch.o
                 0x00000000c0516d8c                sched_mutex

..which seems like a pretty bad thing to happen. :) I'm going to see what 
happens if I boot a stock 3.1 release build instead later this week.

   Any help on how to proceed from here greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
ali:)