On Sat, 9 Nov 1996, Neil J. McRae wrote:

> The install kernel boots fine then starts timing out and the machine
> eventually hangs. This starts just after the 
> 
> WARNING: no swap space found, i.e. when the root fs is now fd0a.


Are you trying to install NetBSD-i386 1.1 from a high density 5.25" drive?  
That's exactly what happened to me when I tried it.