I'm running a vanilla 1.4.2 kernel, and patching conf.c via minstall.
It seems 1.4.2's conf.c is quite a fair bit different than expected and
and I'm concerned patch isn't handling the context diffs w/ enough smarts.
The first hunk (from {ipfsrc..}/NetBSD-1.2/conf.c-PATCH) succeeds, but with
a 170 line offset and fuzz factor 2; the second hunk fails altogether.
Not a big deal, I can figure out where to apply the patches myself, but I
have a couple questions:

(1) I'd like to read the conf.c file with which the patch rules in 
conf.c-PATCH are expected to work.  It would really help me make some sense
of where the patches should be applied.  Safe to assume it's against 1.2's
conf.c?

(2) I suppose I should ask if this is necessary; maybe 1.4.2 conf.c already
contains the correct extra dev defines?

It looks like conf.c-PATCH is against a version of conf.c with no cdev's
defined after ~43/44 ?  The 1.4.2 conf.c has cdev's all the way up to 64, 
I think.  :)  Furthermore, it also has the:

"int nchrdev = sizeof(cdevsw) / sizeof(cdevsw[0]);"

line.  Does this need to be in several places?  It looks to me like nchrdev
probably just needs to be set once to reflect something about the total of
number of define character devices?  Just guessing.

Sorry if all this should be posted to [tech-install,net-install]@netbsd.org
instead!  If that's the case, just let me know and I'll take it there.

If I get all this working, is anyone interested in hearing about it? :)

Thanks and cheers,
Richard