Michael> The latter.  It never sends the DHCP request and hangs there
Michael> waiting for a response to the question it never asked.

Pardon me Michael, but I'm not sure I understand what you are saying
here. Are you saying that the hp700 machine never issues the first
DHCP request?

If so, are you sure that you have configured the boot prom correctly?
There are very good instructions for this in the HP700 FAQ on
www.netbsd.org.

As Jochen said, it is only disk booting that has problems, netboot
should work well.

Best regards,

        -- Urban