Imagine if your kernel tried to fork off init and init didn't
  fly, how terrible would that be.. if you can't imagine it, but
  would like to, it looks like this:

      NetBSD-1.4.1 (GENERIC) ...   
      cpu0: old 486/66
      cpu0: i am really old.. and slow.. help me (you get the idea)
      [totally normal boot messages go here]
      root file system type: ffs   (I *think* this is the last one
                                    before init, and then BAM!)
      Process (pid 1) got signal 11.  
      Process (pid 1) got signal 11.  
      Process (pid 1) got signal 11.  
      Process (pid 1) got signal 11.  
        .
        .
      [and so on, ad infinitum]

  I just installed 1.4.1 on a 500 meg SCSI drive that had 
  previously hosted (I'm a bit embarassed to say) a 1.3_BETA
  install. The install was fresh - newfs, the works. But the
  above is what happens at boot time. 

  The system is an old 486/66 VLB box with an Ultrastor 34f
  controller on that bus. The drive is a Seagate SCSI drive
  with which I've never ever had any problems.

  I'm very very sure that the init binary in /sbin is the correct
  one; I've manually toasted, reextracted and installed it. 
  (could this somehow be failing? i'd really hope not)
  
  Does anyone know what might be causing this? I have a fair
  amount of experience with NetBSD systems (typically on i386)
  but haven't seen this (nor can readily imagine how one might
  go about solving it).

  The boot messages are very very normal, everything is nominal.
  (I can't paste the dmesg output here for a variety of reasons,
  not the least of which is that I'm at work..)

  The only thing I can think of trying at this point is getting
  an INSTALL kernel onto sd0a:/, and maybe the boot floppy's
  init packed binary. (Weird that the INSTALL kernel and the 
  init packed bin do not appear to have the same problem, eh?)

  Thanks for any suggestions anyone might have. Regards,

-- 

                               Colin Bradley
                               hutchison avenue software corporation