In article <20060719210936.GH9384@snowdrop.l8s.co.uk>,
David Laight  <david@l8s.co.uk> wrote:
>On Sun, Jul 16, 2006 at 03:22:29PM -0500, Reed Sheridan wrote:
>> I've recently installed NetBSD on an old Dell, and it doesn't boot
>> properly.  It goes to a screen that says "fn: diskn \n 1: NetBSD," but
>> when I press 1 it says "error ?"
>
>Well 'error ?' is (should be) an invalid input keycode.
>As such it doesn't depend on the return value of any bios call other than
>the one that returned the key value itself.
>(The table of valid input keycodes is generated at the same time as the
>menu strings are output.)
>
>As some check, try pressing the 'F1' key, it should cause the bootstrap
>code to reload itself.
>
>You should also be able to set a default (after timeout) boot partition
>with 'fdisk -B'.
>
>	David

I've seen the same problem on multiple dell 1550's. If you wait without
pressing a key it will boot the default entry. Annoying...

christos