I sucked over the boot12G.fs image from ftp.netbsd.org
(/pub/NetBSD/arch/i386/snap-970901/NetBSD-1.2G/floppies/boot12G.fs, MD5
checksum 145f24b783c89dffe1c3bdaaab0ffabf) and tried to boot from it.
(The reason was to look at the boot messages for hints about how a
certain machine's hardware was set up.)

But when I copied the image to a floppy (dd if=boot12G.fs bs=1228800
of=/dev/rfd0a on a NetBSD/sparc machine) and tried to boot from it....

booting fd0a:netbsd.gz
958464exec: short read
boot: fd0a:netbsd.gz: Input/output error

Based on vague intuition, I copied the image to a NetBSD/i386 machine,
mounted it thanks to the good graces of the vnd driver, and appended
337 bytes from /dev/zero to the netbsd.gz file, that being the number
necessary to pad it to a multiple of 512 (wishing all the while I'd
spent the time to make ffs handle byte-swapped filesystems :-).  I then
copied the resulting image back to a floppy and tried it; it worked
just fine.  Trying each image in turn a few more times has convinced me
it really is a problem with the floppy images, not just a quirk of
hardware state.

Known bug?  Something wrong with this hardware?  Worth sending-pr?

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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