Just a stab in the dark, but I did a lot of Cobalt hacking back in
Qube1-to-2 transition phase. I uncovered the fact that the Eext2 filesystem
changed with the advent of Kernel 2.2 and that most Linux boxen now use
tools that generate Ext2 partitions that the Qube cannot read.

Read the man of mkext2fs, disable all "modern" tricks. You might be
experiencing the same thing, as the BIOS only understands 2.0 kernel era.

Stephane
BTW, I can't wait to see what my 2700 will look like with NetBSD