I'm working with an old Sun 3/50 running SunOS 4.0. Acquaintances have advised
me to try NetBSD, so I'm trying to create an install tape; once I'm
successful, I'll swap hard drives and install NetBSD on a fresh drive (so
that I can recover if NetBSD doesn't work).

Trouble is, I can't make that tape. When I use the MakeBootTape script
in ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.1/sun3/ and try to boot from
the tape it creates, I get the error message "exec: short read" from the
loader. I've tried modifying the script to write EOF marks between the
segments; doesn't help a bit. The dd(1) on this version of SunOS does not
have a conv=osync option, as mentioned in the INSTALL.txt file, so
I can't try it. What else might be wrong? I can't get to square one
without a working install tape.

--Brett Glass