I ran into similar trouble on a machine with a different BIOS.  Your
problem is that the geometry the BIOS is using for the disk drive and the
geometry NetBSD is using don't agree.  Since you're only trying to boot
NetBSD, you can recalculate the starting sector number in geometric terms
the BIOS can understand and create a partition table accordingly.  Once the
first stage boot blocks ar loaded from the NetBSD partition by the bios,
things will go smoothly.  The key is getting your divergent geometries to
agree on which sector is the first sector of the NetBSD partition.
Nothing else matters.
-Brian
On Mar 31, 12:07pm, Ken Harrenstien wrote:
} Subject: Success with Compaq Deskpro XL 566 (AMD AM79C974)
} After doing a complete install of all the NetBSD 1.3K binary sets I'm
} happy to report that everything has worked perfectly so far.  Both the
} PC-Net and PC-SCSI parts of the chip, as well as the QVision 2000
} graphics card, were recognized and supported right out of the box.
} Congratulations and thanks!
} 
} My only remaining problem, and I hesitate to bring this up here because
} (apart from revealing more of my ignorance) I'm not sure whether it's
} Deskpro-specific or not, is getting the BIOS to boot directly from the
} hard drive -- it complains about an invalid partition table.  I
} configured it at install time to be NetBSD-only and the NetBSD "fdisk"
} reports 3 empty partitions with the 4th actively used for NetBSD
} (entire disk except for the first track), with a valid BIOS geometry...
} and I can boot fine if I start from the install floppy and redirect it
} to "sd0a:netbsd"...  but the Deskpro BIOS doesn't like it.  And of
} course that would be the one little piece of opaque, non-open code
} remaining.
} 
} I learned previously that it's a Good Idea to pre-format the Master
} Boot Record for installation to go smoothly, but thought that if I was
} wiping everything out to use a NetBSD-only disk I could just let NetBSD
} write out a fresh MBR, avoiding all the problems of bogus values from a
} bogus MBR.  More importantly, even apart from the question of principle
} (ie avoiding Microsoft completely) it's sometimes difficult to find a
} suitable copy of MS-DOS and FDISK.
} 
} I re-checked the INSTALL doc and the FAQ and this issue didn't seem to
} be directly addressed; perhaps it's assumed that everyone naturally has
} MS-DOS to begin with.  Anyway, I'm going to start grovelling around and
} see if there's anything in the i386 BSD sources that will help me figure out
} how to patch the MBR to fake out this @#$%*!& BIOS without wiping out
} my whole installation.  Unless someone tells me I'm re-inventing the
} wheel I'll send another message after figuring it out.
} 
} --Ken
>-- End of excerpt from Ken Harrenstien