[Geert]
>For anything more complex than two OSes on the same disk, 
>I'd advice you to use grub.  It's a very flexible bootloader 
>which can be installed on any ext2/FAT/FFS/cd9660/jfs/Reiser
>/UFSv2/XFS filesystem.  Install grub's files + config on your 
>NetBSD / filesystem (as NTFS is not supported yet), check if 
>a version on floppy can find them there, and install grub's 
>stage1 into your first disks MBR.  From there on, using grub 
>is *easy*.  

[David]
>If you go down the grub route, you'll find that it need to 
>squirrel stuff away in a filesystem somewhere.  The netbsd 
>mbr bootselect code sits entirely within the first sector.

  I just happen to fiddle with grub since a few days:
yes, it took me so lon to understand it, but I don't 
like "do so, then it works" instructions that google
presented me...

  Yes, a _full_ install of grub wants a bunch of it's
own files in a "firmware reachable partition", when
firmware=peezeeBIOS important limitations apply, but 
real-peezee-gurus-[TM] know them by heart...

  this can be seen as a disadvantage, but to appreciate
modularity at deployment level I gave grub a dedicated 
10MB partition 
(the first DOS primary partition on the master IDE HD 
at the first channel of the first IDE controller)

  OTOH I also managed to follow instructions in a Linux 
book so to have only the content of files stage1 and 
stage2 stuffed onto a floppy and no files laying around
(no menu.lst - just grub> prompt...)
  can't tell whether this is applicable onto hd as well

  here I come to some questions:

 - I'd like to throw together a comparison table (yes,
marketing-suits-bleark-style) to se how the various
bootloaders line up: grub, *BSD, LILO, OF (IEEE-1275),
plain BIOS, DOS MBR, NT loader...
  it'd be for the sake of understanding things better
  please someone help me by providing pro/con info
(keywords: total effective occupied disk space, in-fs 
effective occupied diskspace, number of files, supported 
fs on fd/hd/cd, support for netboot, protocols?, serial 
console, hd swap to foul 'bad' OSs, etc.)

 - I found many sentences telling grub has support for 
iso9660 filesystem (see citation from Geert above too) 
but my interpretation is that this applies only for
iso9660 being on true cd media: I'm looking for a solution
where I can dump images of install cds onto hd (preferrably
directly onto a partition of my choice, not as a file 
sitting in a fs of whatever type) and then thru appropriate 
forging of a bootloader menu entry so to boot off
said iso fs but not off a cd (*)
  which boot loader is capable of such?
  where can I find more doco on this?
  do I need to go away from DOS partition table, toward
BSD-disklable or Sun or which one?

(* my experiments on this -on a peezee w. IDE CDROM & HD- 
stuck at the point where I could not figure out how to tag
a partition as containing an iso9660 fs: I could not figure 
out if this exists at all...
  also it is necessary that the kernels and possibly other
early stage helper files for it are duplicated outside)

  the goal of this is to have a choice at bootloader level
of which cd image to boot from without the need for a CD 
drive for each cd and without having to extract some
files from each cd image, so to be able to quickly switch
between multiple liveCDs of various make

thanks for feedback
(or thanks for noise tolerance - whichever applies :-)
Stephan