Hi Peter,
> 
> > I'm not sure if my memory is correct, but you need to run make once to
> 'make' the configure script if it doesn't exist.  I think when getting a
> tar.gz from Ian's site this file is present but not when building from
> scratch.
> I've been trying to do that Mike, but it doesn't want to make. Sigh... how
> is this C project & tool chain organized?

I'm sorry about that.  I didn't mean that to be obvious.
ok here is what I have just done

mkdir tmp
cd tmp
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous at cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/squeak co -r ned-branch squeak
cd squeak/platforms/unix/config
make

this produces the output
./mkacinc > acplugins.m4
        + ../vm-display-Quartz/acinclude.m4
        + ../vm-display-X11/acinclude.m4
        + ../vm-display-fbdev/acinclude.m4
        + ../vm-sound-MacOSX/acinclude.m4
        + ../vm-sound-NAS/acinclude.m4
        + ../vm-sound-OSS/acinclude.m4
        + ../vm-sound-Sun/acinclude.m4
        + ../vm/acinclude.m4
        + ../plugins/B3DAcceleratorPlugin/acinclude.m4
        + ../plugins/BerkeleyDbPlugin/acinclude.m4
        + ../plugins/FT2Plugin/acinclude.m4
        + ../plugins/Mpeg3Plugin/acinclude.m4
        + ../plugins/ObjectiveCPlugin/acinclude.m4
        + ../plugins/PseudoTTYPlugin/acinclude.m4
        + ../plugins/SpreadPlugin/acinclude.m4
        + ../plugins/SqueakFFIPrims/acinclude.m4
        + ../plugins/XDisplayControlPlugin/acinclude.m4
aclocal-1.7
autoconf
rm acplugins.m4

you don't get this output?  if not this may suggest that something is missing in your tool chain.  I'm afraid that I'm not entirely sure what packages you need.  All the various flavours of Linux that I have tried this on always seem to have the right things installed.  Someone else should be able to chip in with the answer.

I'm afraid I don't know anything about freebsd.  I think that is your system type?

Looking at the makefile and my system

/usr/bin/aclocal-1.7 -> provided by automake
/usr/bin/autoconf -> provided by autoconf

On my Gentoo system I have
autoconf-2.58-r1
automake-1.7.7
make-3.80
m4-1.4-r1

quick dependencies
m4 <- autoconf <- automake

Hope this is a tad more useful but you may already have these installed.

Cheers

Mike