I also recently tried to get NetBSD-1.3.2 to boot on the i386 with
the NetBSD partition starting at sector 1.  I did finally get things
initialized and working after several tries.  So my earlier problems
were not with the BIOS, but the way NetBSD installed got things 
installed.  I did learn stuff by that exercise.

-- 
Phil Nelson
phil@steelhead.cs.wwu.edu (NetBSD/pc532 machine)
phil@cs.wwu.edu (work)
http://www.cs.wwu.edu/~phil