I tried to boot the NetBSD.ecoff file that came with the wasabi NetBSD
1.5 cdrom.  Bad news.  My Deskstation rPC44 didn't like the kernel at
all.  It refused to load the kernel.  It claimed to have the wrong
sub-type (0xe vs 0x8 I believe).  I've had this problem before with
Linux kernels and a tweak to the program that generates the ECOFF
always has done the trick.  I'll let people know if I make progress
(I've been spending much of my NetBSD time trying to update my
NetBSD/hpcmips machine lately: 1.5 -> current is a real minefield).

I did this by brute force.  Create a disk with a 100M DOS partition
and the rest had a FreeBSD label.  I copied the kernel to the dos
partition and untarred the sets onto the ufs side of things (I didn't
change the partition type to NetBSD, maybe I should).  I then ran the
kernel I put on the dos partition and got the above error :-(.

The Deskstation rPC44 (also sold in a very similar configuration as
the EPC44) is your basic PC clone of the time (486 mobo) with EISA
slots and a MIPS CPU bolted into place where the Intel one once was.
It maps its I/O space at 0xb0000000 and its ISA memory at
0xa00000000 (these are for uncached accesses).  It has very old and
very picky BIOS :-(.  I've tried unsuccessfully to get a BIOS upgrade
over the years, but never was successful.

Warner