Well, I don't know whether this is the answer you're looking for, but this
happened to me once (during an install actually).  The IRQ settings for my
ethernet card were wrong (or at least not what NetBSD expected them to
be).  I would check this out (make sure your ethernet card is set for the
right IRQ...)

--fission

On Tue, 18 Jan 2000, ali (Anders Lindgren) wrote:

> ...I should probably have pointed out that if I try to
> change the settings of ne2 (when done during boot it works
> as in "no error-messages are displayed in dmesg.boot")
> I consistently get: "ifconfig: ne2: device timeout".
> 
> -- 
> /ali: Computer Science Major and aspiring cartoonist. :-) 
> (dept) dat94ali@ludat.lth.se - http://www.ludat.lth.se/~dat94ali
> (home) ali@h543.sparta.lu.se - http://h543.sparta.lu.se/
> * a4000/040/18M/AmigaOS3.0 - NetBSD-1.4.1 - cogito, amiga sum *
> 
>