Excerpts from netbsd: 13-Oct-97 Odd kernel reboots Dave
Burgess@cynjut.neon (9839*)

> Every kernel I've built since the middle of
> September exhibits the same odd behavior.

Hm, the changes I did to the argument passing started
at Sep 20. Has it worked before this day?

> -  The system comes up normally, until it probes the IDE controller.
> The system then spontaneously reboots.

The IDE probe itself should not be affected.
>From your `dmesg`, the next device attached is
an ethernet card. There are some actions in
device_register() which deal with network adapters,
so there could be the reason for the problem.
(Does the crash happen _after_ the wd attach?)

There are some things you can try:
a) boot from really new bootblocks - eg take a floppy
   and "boot hd1a:/netbsd" from it
b) invoke some kernel debugger support and get more
   information
c) comment out the body of device_register()
  (in autoconf.c)
d) tell me the contents of the "bootinfo[]" array
  (in machdep.c)

I tried to avoid incompatibilities with older bootblocks,
so if (a) or (c) helps, I'd be interested in (d), and the
version of the bootblocks you are using.

best regards
Matthias