> I wasn't so sure about using them for booting...  A boot-floppy
> may be the simplest solution, but he can probably avoid it without
> too much hassle if he really wants to.

Maybe.

> Alternatively to [temporarily] installing a floppy drive, he could
> use a CD-ROM drive [...]

If CD-ROM booting is dependent on specific code in the BIOS to
support it (I think it is), you're probably unlikely to find such
support in BIOSes on a motherboard of the 386sx/25 era.

> [...] or install the OS onto the hard drive while the HD is in
> another computer, then transplant the drive.

Right.  "Details of this operation left as an excercise for the
reader."  If you do this from another OS, possibly even if just the
CPU architecture is different, you add complexity to the process; so
much so that resorting to the floppy boot method, though perhaps
religiously the "wrong" solution, would acheive the goal of getting
NetBSD/i386 installed quite a bit faster.

> I believe that I saw a short thread about loading/booting
> NetBSD from MS-DOS, even.  (^& (The last is probably the
> easiest, if it can really be done...)

Yes, but I think the NetBSD-from-MS-DOS boot code still isn't happy at
all if there is a "memory manager" (to support that memory area above
the 1M mark) enabled at the time it's started, so "beware".

> How many other ways can you get NetBSD onto an i386 w/o
> touching floppies, I wonder?  I don't suppose that NetBSD lends
> itself to being burned onto an [E]PROM?

I think there are some vestiges of boot prom code for some of the NICs
NetBSD supports lying around, that enable booting NetBSD over the
network.  I think it's a while since the code has been used (?), so it
may have fallen into disrepair (?).

There's also the "PXE" boot method which newer BIOSes / NICs may
support, but again, you're unlikely to find such code in 386/sx-25
hardware, and I'm not sure NetBSD has the code yet to support
booting with such BIOS/NIC combinations.

Best regards,

- H=E5vard