> Okay, here's the results of performing the ftp manually as you suggested:
 [snip]

Sorry for the bad layout, I'm just going to show it "as is"
$ export ftp_proxy="http://proxy.plano1.tx.home.com:8080/"
$ ftp -ad ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.5_ALPHA2/i386/installation/floppy/boot1.fs
isipv6addr: got 0 for ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.5_ALPHA2/i386/ins
tallation/floppy/boot1.fs
parse_url: user `<null>' pass `<null>' host ftp.netbsd.org port ftp(21) path `pu
b/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.5_ALPHA2/i386/installation/floppy/boot1.fs'
got savefile as `boot1.fs'
parse_url: user `<null>' pass `<null>' host proxy.plano1.tx.home.com port 8080(8
080) path `/'
isipv6addr: got 0 for ftp.netbsd.org
Requesting ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.5_ALPHA2/i386/installation/f
loppy/boot1.fs
  (via proxy.plano1.tx.home.com:8080)
received `HTTP/1.0 200 OK'
received `Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2000 16:16:25 GMT'
received `Via: FTP/1.1 plano1.tx.home.com (Traffic-Server/3.0.7 [uScMs f p eN:t
cCMi p s ])'
received `Content-Type: application/x-unknown-content-type'
received `Content-Length: 1474560'
parsed len as: 1474560
100% |*************************************|  1440 KB  214.77 KB/s    00:00 ETA

Regards
Nigel