Ack.. sorry to reply to myself.. but I just noticed this in the INSTALL kernel:

fd*     at fdc? drive ?                 # the drives themselves
# some machines need you to do this instead of fd*
#fd0    at fdc0 drive 0

Obviously.. this is one of those machines.  I take it this is a known bad?

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Tim Rightnour    -  root@garbled.net
http://www.zynetwc.com/~garbled/garbled.html