Hello David,

  DL> Yes, one of its few cryptic error messages...

Are it's error messages somewhat terse because it has to
live within 512 bytes?

  DL> That is the physical geometry (probably a lie), the
    > BIO geometry has a max cylinders of 1023

I imagine all the geometries are fake these days :-) Perhaps
FDISK was telling me what it had been told by the BIOS,
which might account for its apparent confidence in the
values it suggested.  That suggests that the BIOS is doing
some geometry conversion.

  DL> That isn't the bootselecter, that is the netbsd 'boot'
    > program.  It is loaded out of the netbsd root
    > partition.  It will only load netbsd (r something very
    > similar). But will do from any disk it knows of.

I forget the wording that sysinst used, but could tell that
it was the ordinary boot sector.  It seems a good, no-
nonsense way to bring the machine up.

  DL> The bootselecter sits completely within the mbr
    > (sector 0), it will (probbaly) boot most os that will
    > boot from standard mbr code.  Quite useful if you want
    > to multiboot a system.

Possibly also useful if I want to test different kernels and
boot devices?

  DL> Anyone one to do some further tests for me?

I'll happily do that.  I have another ProLinea that I can
use as a test-bed, and I'll happily donate some time to help
out.

I'll try to replicate my situation on that machine: diag
partition and NetBSD 'part of disk' that's installed, but
won't boot.  That should give me the opportunity to check
out your improvements.  Where do I find the source?

Regards,
  - Andy Ball.