Just a data point in case people have been paying attention:

I returned the Highpoint and exchanged it for a Maxtor ATA/100 PCI card.

When boot from the hard disk, the boot-selector still dies.  (It prints a
``3'' when I push F4 for the NetBSD partition, then dies.)

When I boot from a NetBSD install CD, but hit <space> and type ``boot
wd0a:netbsd'', it works (well, more or less; it doesn't seem to lose
interrupts).


On the other hand, performance still sucks.


My next guess is that the hard disk is my problem.



Here's the dmesg with my present boot (boot wd0a:netbsd after using the
install CD's boot code).  I suppose that the thing to try next is to build
an INSTALL kernel and use that...


 /~~~ dmesg

pciide1 at pci0 dev 9 function 0: Promise Ultra100/ATA Bus Master IDE Accelerator (rev. 0x02)
pciide1: bus-master DMA support present
pciide1: primary channel configured to native-PCI mode
pciide1: using irq 10 for native-PCI interrupt
wd0 at pciide1 channel 0 drive 0: <Maxtor 52049H4>
wd0: drive supports 16-sector pio transfers, lba addressing
wd0: 19541 MB, 16383 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 40020624 sectors
wd0: 32-bit data port
wd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 5
wd0(pciide1:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 4 (using DMA data transfers)
pciide1: secondary channel configured to native-PCI mode
pciide1: disabling secondary channel (no drives)

 \___ dmesg


  ``I probably don't know what I'm talking about.'' --rauch@math.rice.edu