I'm not getting the "Panic: mesh: FIFO != 0" error but a "mesh
timeout/resetting dma" error. I've had the best luck with the boot
floppy from the latest 1.4.3a snapshot - I've gotten as far as untarring
the sets and setting up parts of the system - but when I try to
multi-user boot I get the mesh errors. The 1.5 boot.fs craps out while
running mdec, and the 20000205 snapshot does the same thing. The
revision 1.1 OF boot seems to work better for this machine(The S900 is a
clone of the powermac 9500). It has six internal bays (and scsi
connectors) and the kernel correctly identifies both IBM's as well as
mounting an iso9660 CD with no problem. It has let me do a fair amount
of disk i/o before locking up. I've downloaded two snapshots to a Linux
partition and am able to copy the sets from there(in Linux) to the
NetBSD disk and untar under NetBSD from there. I'm thinking it's a
OF/kernel problem rather than a hardware problem - Although - after the
mesh error I cannot boot directly into Linux, but must power down the
entire machine as the Linux kernel stops at identifying the scsi devices
i.e. the entire scsi system is unusable. I've had no problem with
termination/scsi under MacOS or Linux. After what Monroe and Jake have
said, I think I'll try the kernel set from the 20000205 snapshot and see
if that works, after partitioning with sysinst from the 1.4.3a snapshot.
Any help in getting NetBSD up and running is very much appreciated - as
I am a newbie to the BSD world.

Thanks guys,

Tom