> Is it just my machine, or is the cats port somewhat shaky?

Which kernel are you using?

> While building the kernel (running diskless), I sometimes get strange
> compiler errors.  Just running make again solves it.
> I have suffered two kernel drops to the debugger so far...and I have
> yet to complete the build.
>
> Is this normal?  I have not seen a NetBSD misbehave like this before,
> at least not this much..

While I've not done diskless booting of my cats boxes, this does sound
rather erratic.  Maybe it's worth taking the box apart and giving if a
dust?  You mentioned issues with the network card, and reseating it
helped, maybe the memory sticks need the same?

I believe that you can make the kernel boot directly from NFS but you nee=
d
to add some (standard) NFS options to the kernel.  I'll dig them out when
I get home.

Chris