Thanks to the advice here on the current-users list I finally managed
to bootstrap current onto Alison's new sony 505ve.  The key sticking
points worth documenting in the archives were:

1) the sony 505ve has no traditional floppy and a usb floppy is not
   (yet) supported by netbsd.  One can't load more than the first
   bios-loaded floppy of information.

   The install floppy didn't have any network drivers.  I had to make
   a floppy with only a bootstrap and a full-blown kernel with dhcp as
   a root-fs option.

1) the sony 505ve crashes on initial boot if "pnpbios0 at mainbus0"
   and related goop is on.  Comment out everything with pnpbios in it.
   
   (Thanks to Castor Fu for pointing this out.)

2) the sony 505ve has some unusual irq reservations.  The "pcmcia over
   pcic" doesn't work.  The tx packets sent out of the ep0 never
   really get sent out.  Neither a default PCIC_ISA_INTR_ALLOC_MASK or
   one masking out all the "stray interrupt" complaints will leave one
   with a working ep0.  This is the most promising, with no stray
   interrupts, but it didn't work.  
        options PCIC_ISA_INTR_ALLOC_MASK=0xfd6f
   Turning off all unused isa devices in the bios didn't help either.
   
3) the cardbus attachment of the pcmcia works quite a bit better, but
   if one wants to boot from dhcp one needs to set a special flag.
   Without the flag the cardbus is scanned after the time that one
   must select the root fs.

           cardslot*	at cbb? flags 0x0001

   (Thanks to Hayakawa Koichi for explaining this.)
   
And thats all there is to it. ;-) 

Once netbsd is up in diskless mode one can use the full power of a
working netbsd system to copy a working filesystem to the local disk.

Castor Fu also suggested an alternate bootstrapping method of using
"The Evil OS" that is shipped on the Sony disk to transfer an install
system and tarfiles onto the DOS partition and install from there.
Folks without a netbsd desktop might have to choose that option.

-wolfgang
-- 
       Wolfgang Rupprecht <wolfgang+gnus@dailyplanet.wsrcc.com>
		    http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/
DGPS signals via the Internet  http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/gps/dgps-ip.html