This is a known problem, and it comes up in other contexts, such
   as when you want to boot a kernel other than /netbsd. I don't have
   a workaround at the moment, but it's definitely on my List Of Things
   To Fix. The problem is as much with the Alpha console as anything
   else, sad to say.
   
   There seems to be a general movement away from using bootparamd,
   which is a bit of a relief to tell the truth. Let me know if you
   find any interesting workarounds; I won't have any time to work on
   this until after the 1.3 release.

Now that we've noticed g++ actually links with the 1.3 alpha/alpha release,
we couldn't agree more with your priorities :).

For the future, I note that the network boot is in fact going to the
bootp server for the nfs mount, not to the ip given by the sa property
in bootptab.  In my case, the bootp server happens to nfs mount the same
disk farm under the same pathname (/nfs/machine/path) so it operates :).
I suppose I can use the sparc as a bootp server too, but I have a feeling
your customers will want finer control over their distributed resources
than they can get from bootp at the moment.