P> disk attached to my StarMax 4160. I downloaded the boot
 
P> mesh0 at obio0 offset 0x10000 irq 12: 50 MHz, SCSI ID 7
P> scsibus0 at mesh0: 8 targets, 8 luns per target
P> panic: mesh: FIFO !=3D 0
P> rebooting

Either you have (hardwarish) problem on cable, terminater
on SCSI Bus, or using wrong (not recent) floppy boot.fs

I have tried (sorry, it was BETA one) the same thing on
with StarMax 3180 and works fine.
--------------------
  ftp://ftp.iij.ad.jp/pub/NetBSD/ NetBSD-1.4_BETA/ macppc/
     installation/ floppy/
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# Although, I remember, I had ifconfig problem with sysinst.
Makoto Fujiwara