The sparc boot floppy for netbsd-1.4 fails spectacularily; it is clear
   that nobody has bothered testing it lately.  dmesg fails to work
   because /netbsd doesn't exist, in particular.  There might be some
   other failures to do something intelligent and reasonable.


that's right.


it's fixed in the 1.4.1 release.  i'll try to get a replacement up
there soon.