Ok, so dumb me, I missed the installboot separation from disklabel
for the i386 platform.  Now that I'm using installboot I seem to 
have a problem installing the boot blocks on a new disk.  The IDE 
disk is labeled as follows:

    # /dev/rwd0d:
    type: unknown
    disk: wdc33100
    label: 
    flags:
    bytes/sector: 512
    sectors/track: 63
    tracks/cylinder: 16
    sectors/cylinder: 1008
    cylinders: 6136
    total sectors: 6185088
    rpm: 5200
    interleave: 1
    trackskew: 0
    cylinderskew: 0
    headswitch: 0           # milliseconds
    track-to-track seek: 0  # milliseconds
    drivedata: 0 
    
    7 partitions:
    #        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize   cpg]
    a:   202545       63      4.2BSD      512  4096    16   # (Cyl.    0*- 200*)
    b:  1033200   202608        swap                        # (Cyl.  201 - 1225)
    c:  6185088        0      unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 6135)
    d:  6185088        0      unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 6135)
    e:  2797200  1235808      4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl. 1226 - 4000)
    f:  1611792  4033008      4.2BSD      512  4096    16   # (Cyl. 4001 - 5599)
    g:   540288  5644800      4.2BSD      512  4096    16   # (Cyl. 5600 - 6135)

As suggested in the man page as root I do:

  /usr/mdec/installboot -f /usr/mdec/biosboot.sym /dev/wd0a

I get no error messages BUT, I cannot boot the disk.  Back in the 
"disklabel -B wd0" days a disk labelled with this same disktab entry 
would boot ok.  What am I do wrong?

TIA,
Paul