Worked fine if I NFS booted the generic kernel that Gordon just put
up.
  I have partitioned the disk according to someone better numbers
(rather than guessing "sun1Gb") and copied the miniroot to swap.

>b sd(0,0,1)
Boot: sd(0,0,1) 
>> NetBSD ufsboot [$Revision: 1.2 $]
631924+30016+95784+[53832+60330]=0xd4dd2
Starting program at 0x4000
sun3_save_symtab:  found 53832 + 60330
console on zs0 (ttya)
[ preserving 114166 bytes of netbsd symbol table ]
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
        The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.

NetBSD 1.1_ALPHA (GENERIC) #68: Fri Nov 17 17:51:26 EST 1995
    gwr@kanga:/home/gwr/netbsd/work/src/sys/arch/sun3/compile/GENERIC
Model: Sun 3/60
real mem = 8372224
avail mem = 6799360
using 63 buffers containing 516096 bytes of memory
mainbus0 (root)
obctl0 at mainbus0
idprom0 at obctl0 hostid 0x1700d5ce
fpu0 at mainbus0 (mc68881)
obmem0 at mainbus0
bwtwo0 at obmem0 addr 0xff000000 (1152x900)
obio0 at mainbus0
zs0 at obio0 addr 0x20000 level 6 softpri 3
zs1 at obio0 addr 0x0 level 6 softpri 3
eeprom0 at obio0 addr 0x40000
clock0 at obio0 addr 0x60000 level 5
le0 at obio0 addr 0x120000 level 3 hwaddr 08:00:20:06:8b:1c
si0 at obio0 addr 0x140000 level 2
scsibus0 at si0
si0 targ 0 lun 0: <CONNER, CFP1060S 1.05GB, 2035> SCSI2 0/direct fixed
sd0 at scsibus0: 1013MB, 2756 cyl, 8 head, 94 sec, 512 bytes/sec
si0 targ 1 lun 0: <CONNER, CFP1060S 1.05GB, 2035> SCSI2 0/direct fixed
sd2 at scsibus0: 1013MB, 2756 cyl, 8 head, 94 sec, 512 bytes/sec
si0 targ 2 lun 0: <CONNER, CFP1060S 1.05GB, 2035> SCSI2 0/direct fixed
sd4 at scsibus0: 1013MB, 2756 cyl, 8 head, 94 sec, 512 bytes/sec
si0 targ 3 lun 0: <CONNER, CFP1060S 1.05GB, 2035> SCSI2 0/direct fixed
sd5 at scsibus0: 1013MB, 2756 cyl, 8 head, 94 sec, 512 bytes/sec
si0 targ 4 lun 0: <CONNER, CFP1060S 1.05GB, 2035> SCSI2 0/direct fixed
sd6 at scsibus0: 1013MB, 2756 cyl, 8 head, 94 sec, 512 bytes/sec
si0 targ 5 lun 0: <CONNER, CFP1060S 1.05GB, 2035> SCSI2 0/direct fixed
sd7 at scsibus0: 1013MB, 2756 cyl, 8 head, 94 sec, 512 bytes/sec
si0 targ 6 lun 0: <CONNER, CFP1060S 1.05GB, 2035> SCSI2 0/direct fixed
sd8 at scsibus0: 1013MB, 2756 cyl, 8 head, 94 sec, 512 bytes/sec
rd0 at mainbus0
rd1 at mainbus0
root on sd0b
swap on sd0b
dump on sd0b
Preserved 15966 blocks of miniroot leaving 4971 pages of swap
/etc/rc: Can't open /etc/rc
Enter pathname of shell or RETURN for sh: 
intr ^C kill ^U erase ^? werase ^W newcrt
Determining current root device...
Remounting root device sd0b
To install NetBSD, enter the command:  install
Otherwise, enter the command:  halt
# install

Welcome to the NetBSD/sun3 1.1 installation program.


This program is designed to help you install NetBSD on your system in a
simple and rational way.  You'll be asked several questions, and it will
be useful to have the installation notes and a calculator at hand.

As with anything which modifies your disk's contents, this program can
cause SIGNIFICANT data loss, and you are advised to make sure all your
disks are backed up before beginning the installation process.

Default answers are displyed in brackets after the questions.
You can hit Control-C at any time to quit, but if you do so at a
prompt, you may have to hit return.  Also, quitting in the middle of
installation may leave your system in an inconsistent state.

Proceed with installation? [n] y
Cool!  Let's get to it...

The installation program needs to know which disk will be
the root disk of the system about to be installed.

Available disks are:

sd0
sd2

Which disk is the root disk? sd0

You have already placed a disklabel onto the target root disk.
However, due to the limitations of the standalone program used
you may want to edit that label to change partition type information.
You will be given the opporunity to do that now.  Note that you may
not change the size or location of any presently open partition.

... okay vi comes up ... bitches about not be able to recover
(should /var/tmp exist on the miniroot?)



You will now be given the opportunity to place disklabels on any additional
disks on your system.

You may label the following disks:

sd2

Label which disk? [done] 

You will now have the opportunity to enter filesystem information.
You will be prompted for device name and mount point (full path,
including the leading '/' character).

Note that these do not have to be in any particular order.  You will
be given the opportunity to edit the resulting 'fstab' file before
any of the filesystems are mounted.  At that time you will be able
to resolve any filesystem order dependencies.

The following will be used for the root filesystem:
        sd0a    /

Device name? [done] sd0e
Mount point? /w

Device name? [done] 

You have configured the following devices and mount points:

sd0a    /
sd0e    /w
[I do not wish to have a /usr]

Filesystems will now be created on these devices.  If you made any
mistakes, you may edit this now.  Edit? [n] n
Create filesystem on sd0a? [y] y
/dev/rsd0a:     599344 sectors in 797 cylinders of 8 tracks, 94 sectors
        292.6MB in 50 cyl groups (16 c/g, 5.88MB/g, 1408 i/g)
super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at:
 32, 12160, 24288, 36416, 48544, 60672, 72800, 84928,
...

same for /w.

I'm now finishing my ftp of the new base.tar.gz.