  The meander instability of a vicinal surface growing under step flow
conditions is studied within a solid-on-solid model. In the absence of edge
diffusion the selected meander wavelength agrees quantitatively with the
continuum linear stability analysis of Bales and Zangwill [Phys. Rev. B {\bf
41}, 4400 (1990)]. In the presence of edge diffusion a local instability
mechanism related to kink rounding barriers dominates, and the meander
wavelength is set by one-dimensional nucleation. The long-time behavior of the
meander amplitude differs in the two cases, and disagrees with the predictions
of a nonlinear step evolution equation [O. Pierre-Louis et al., Phys. Rev.
Lett. {\bf 80}, 4221 (1998)]. The variation of the meander wavelength with the
deposition flux and with the activation barriers for step adatom detachment and
step crossing (the Ehrlich-Schwoebel barrier) is studied in detail. The
interpretation of recent experiments on surfaces vicinal to Cu(100) [T.
Maroutian et al., Phys. Rev. B {\bf 64}, 165401 (2001)] in the light of our
results yields an estimate for the kink barrier at the close packed steps.
