> [Read error, tho' everything seems fine with the setup]
> 
> So this leaves me with two questions:
> 
> 	a) Anyone have any other things I can try that might get netbsd
> 	   to boot off of my hard drive?

I just spent three days tearing my hair out over this one ('hair' being 
singular, of course).

You're using a Maxtor, aren't you?

Maxtor (and perhaps other recent IDE drives) are trying to be funny with 
the way they report the cylinders, heads, and sectors.  They seem to think
that there are a lot of machines out there that still don't do LBA 
addressing, and they provide a DOS-based resident loader that correctly 
'reads' the hard drive, or translates, or some such garbage.  As a result, 
your BIOS will say one thing, and pfdisk will say another.

A couple of points I've discovered:

	1) Your machine's BIOS, and NetBSD's bootup sequence, are both
	   wrong wrt the heads, sectors, and cylinders.  Pfdisk is correct.
	   Use pfdisk's geometry when you set up NetBSD, regardless of what
	   the boot sequence tells you.  To ensure that the geometry is
	   correct, use Maxtor's own partitioning software.  It's up on 
	   their website, costs nothin'.

	2) After trying every possible combination (I, too, have no need for
	   DOS or Winblows), the ONLY solution that has worked is to create
	   a dummy DOS partition (one meg, ten megs, whatever) on the 
	   beginning of the disk, and create a separate NetBSD partition.
	   Use OS-BS 2.0 Beta 8 to jump to the NetBSD partition.  For some
	   reason, if I started NetBSD on the 0th sector, the bootblock was
	   never correctly written.  Hence the 'Read error.'  I might add 
	   that 1.1 worked fine in this situation; not sure if this is a
	   bug with 1.2.

Give #2 a shot; it will work, as long as you have the drive geometry 
correct.  I danced quite the jig.

I am using a Maxtor 1336M drive.  My Phoenix BIOS, NetBSD, and hell, even 
the drive documentation says that it's 2595 cylinders, 16 heads, and 64
sectors.  Pfdisk and Maxtor's own Max-blast both say 647 cylinders, 63 
heads, 64 sectors.  Point #2 _would not work_ with the former drive 
geometry, only with the latter.

> Thanks for your help.

Betcha.

> Stephen W. Thomas                       Internet email: swt@aca.com

David Hopper (bard@gw.hopper.aa.net) : http://gw.hopper.aa.net 
Global Event Services, Inc. : Tradeshow and Large Conference Tech. Support
NetBSD 1.2 Amiga (gw.hopper.aa.net) : NetBSD 1.2 x86 (host194.hopper.aa.net)
"Two pale drops of fire guttering in the vast consuming darkness" -V. Price