In some email I received from Michael L. Hitch, sie wrote:
[...]
> > The disk had an Ultrix FFS disk label on it, which I thought would be like
> > the SunOS4 one and "just work".  Not so.  Even worse, the information
> > which was there seemed to confuse sysinst and instead of detecting a 634MB
> > HDD, I got a 4MB HDD, with one partition being -127 sectors in size at
> > offset 129 (or similar).  In contrast, checking /kern/msgbuf, it was
> > clear that it had been probed correctly.
> > 
> > This was the first time NetBSD had been introduced to this computer.
> 
>   Are you netbooting the install kernel, or did you dd the diskimage to
> the disk and boot the install kernel from the diskimage?

I did dd the disk image and come to think of it, I think I tried a
diskimage early on.

>   I think there is a problem with using the diskimage - the magic code
> that detects booting from a diskimage is broken, and the disk geometry
> from the diskimage label is being used.  I think the diskimage size is
> 4MB, which would match what you are seeing.

That sounds very familiar.

Darren