By accident I found out that my server can apparently boot from USB mass
storage (in this case, an IDE disk in an external USB2 enclosure). The
kernel (3.0/amd64) is loaded from the USB disk and starts. However, when
it comes to using the root device, it claims a "port problem" and
disables uhub4, which is the one that the drive is on. This is probably
because the BIOS has tinkered with the USB controller already and NetBSD
can't handle that.

Any chance that this is different/better in -current?

-Olaf.
-- 
___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert      -- You author it, and I'll reader it.
\X/ rhialto/at/xs4all.nl        -- Cetero censeo "authored" delendum esse.