> I take it from this experience that there's gotta be some way for one to set
> up the DOS disk such that it starts at an offset sufficiently in from the
> beginning of the disk that will make it avoid getting trampled if one puts a
> NetBSD disklabel on it.  Is this the case?

OK, the way this works [stinks.  No, the way this works] is like this:
You use DOS to divide up the disk into a DOS partition, starting at
the front of the disk, and a non-DOS partition of type 165 (you'll
actually need a program called PFDISK to do this, I believe).  The
NetBSD disklabel will go at the front of the *second DOS partition*,
so you want to disklabel the D partition.  This is all apparently
explained more carefully in one of the install documents, but who reads
documentation? :-)  My experience, the last time I suffered through
this, is that once you make a misstep, disklabel will almost inevitably
end up hosing the disk completely.

Do you know anyone else running NetBSD?  Maybe you could stop by their
machine, plug in a blank SCSI drive, and restore onto it.  (I've always
found the easiest way to do an install on a new machine is to do it
on an old machine instead. :-)