>(2) Later, I tried an ftp installation (having brought the laptop home
>    to where my build machine is).  Unfortunately, this isn't working
>    either:  the laptop has a 3COM EtherLink III PCMCIA card, which appears
>    to probe as "ep1", but when sysinst turns it on, it doesn't work;
>    the little light on the ethernet connector blinks and nothing
>    happens.

Two further notes, which might be of interest:

The PC Card is labelled "3C589D"; this is sufficiently different from
a "3C589C" that Windows98 feels obliged to load a new driver for it
when swapped into another laptop that formerly had a 3C589C.  Of
course, that could just be slovenly matching.

As to the IRQ allocation problem, I think NetBSD gave it IRQ9 all to itself,
but it's hard to tell without dmesg working...

I'll probably just have to borrow an external floppy and burn a CD
with the tar files (though I'll try again with the 589C card in case
there really is a difference which matters).