Gtk dies on VaxStation

[Kevin Handy <kth srv net>]

If I start up the 'testgtk' progeam using a VaxStation 3100 as an
Xterminal and just leave it sitting there, it will die after a
random time (10 minutes or so) with the error

Gdk-ERROR **: Fatal IO error 104 (connection reset by peer) on X server
blahblah:0.0

What does this actually mean? And should this error be handled by
gdk somehow?  Non-gtk programs don't seem to do this to me('xterm's
will stay up forever for example), but all gtk programs do.

This has been there with all versions of gtk that I've tries.
I just tried it with version 1.2.4, and it still does it.