The NetBSD kernel only uses the video card for a text console.  I'm not
sure that our ``vga'' support is really VGA-specific; I assumed that it
worked with pretty much any old PC video hardware to produce a text
display.  (Comments from others on this?)  You might still get rid of this
support if you were going to run the machine headless (serial console, or
just login via a network connection).  But if you're going to hook up a
keyboard and monitor to the thing, I don't think that you want to get rid
of the VGA stuff.

Anyway, producing a suitable config file isn't too difficult.  I assume
that you won't install the NetBSD sources...but I can send you the 1.5
GENERIC kernel config for you to pare down.  Most of the stuff to remove
is fairly obvious.  (E.g., you don't need 486, 586, or 686 CPU support.  
You can remove all of the COMPAT_* stuff almost certainly.  ...) The
GENERIC config file is also fairly well-commented.  Some NON-obvious
points (covered in man-pages, etc., but not immediately obvious from the
GENERIC file):

 * I'm told that the max # of users influences other constants in the
   kernel.  I don't know if any of these constitute hard limits, but
   even if you're the sole user and never expect to be multiply logged
   in, you probably don't want to set this too low.  (Comments from
   others?)

 * options INET (IPv4 support) isn't really an option.  You need to have
   it.

 * The SYSV features (shared memory, messages, semaphors) can probably
   be dropped.  I think that it might be used by some X stuff, but even
   there I assume that it's not essential for normal operations.
   (Again, comments frmo others?)

 * The comment on DUMMY_NOPS has never been particularly clear to me.
   I believe that what it tries to convey is: Leave the line commented
   out on old machines.  For most (i.e., newer) machines, the line
   should be uncommented.  Your machine, being rather old, probably
   wouldn't like having DUMMY_NOPS enabled.

   (Maybe the phrase ``very old'' should be made more quantitative,
    here?  Perhaps an estimate on the years in which affected machines
    were manufactured?)


Let me know if/when you want the NetBSD/i386 1.5 GENERIC config.  (It
weighs in at 28832 bytes/845 lines.)


  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about." --rauch@eecs.ukans.edu