the advice was to run 'scsictl format' on it, so i just got 1.5 on my LX so
i thought i'd try that.  panics the box with:

buddy# scsictl sd1 format
sd1(esp0:1:0):  Check Condition on CDB: 0x08 00 00 00 01 00
    SENSE KEY:  Media Error                                
     ASC/ASCQ:  Medium Format Corrupted
                                       
sd1: disk label read error
sd1(esp0:1:0): esp0: timed out [ecb 0xf050e104 (flags 0x1, dleft 0, stat 0)], <state 2, nexus 0xf050e104, phase(l 12, c 100, p 7), resid 400, msg(q 0,o 0) DMA active>
panic: esp0: invalid state: 5
syncing disks... 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 giving up
Frame pointer is at 0xf025cf20
Call traceback:               
  pc = 0xf01f2be0  args = (0x419000e4, 0x41900fe4, 0x0, 0xf0271c00, 0xf025d038, 0x419000e4, 0xf025cf88) fp = 0xf025cf88
  pc = 0xf005ed90  args = (0x100, 0x0, 0xf0294000, 0x40, 0xf01c0cfc, 0x4, 0xf025cff0) fp = 0xf025cff0
  pc = 0xf002498c  args = (0xf0220788, 0x100, 0x5, 0x5, 0xffffffff, 0x28, 0xf025d058) fp = 0xf025d058
                     
dumping to dev 7,1 offset 9183
dump sd0(esp0:0:0): esp0: timed out [ecb 0xf050e16c (flags 0x1, dleft 200, stat 0)], <state 5, nexus 0xf050e104, phase(l 16, c 6, p 7), resid 0, msg(q 20,o 0) >
sd0(esp0:0:0): ncr53c9x_abort: not NEXUS                                       
sd0(esp0:0:0): max sync rate 10.00MB/s  
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 succeeded
rebooting                    
         
Resetting ... 

is the a fatal permanant error? or should i try and format this again somewhere
else, either with a different version of NetBSD or maybe something with some
descent SCSI ROMs?

thanks,

-brian