Sounds like the BIOS and NetBSD/floppy disk geometries for the hard
disk don't match.  I had one of those machines.  Finally had to rewrite the
disk label such that the geometries were completely different for BIOS and
NetBSD, couldn't get them to agree and work, but so that they at least
agreed on the starting sector.
-Brian

On Jan 14,  4:15pm, Jukka Marin wrote:
} Subject: 1.3.3 no boot?
} Someone's trying to install NetBSD 1.3.3 on a pentium system.  This
} machine had been running NetBSD 1.2 before.
} 
} Install went ok, as far as I can tell (sitting on the phone, 400 km from
} the machine).
} 
} When we try to boot off the IDE disk, BIOS prints out its messages and
} then the machine locks up.  No bootloader messages, no nothing.
} 
} We tried to boot off the install floppy, mounted root and /usr and did
} ./installboot biosboot.sym /dev/wd0a in /mnt/usr/mdec - got no error
} messages.  Umounted disks, rebooted - no go.
} 
} Reinstalled NetBSD 1.3.3 - the same thing.
} 
} Now we wiped off the first 100k of the disk and are installing again,
} but I'm not holding my breath.
} 
} The root partition starts at sector 63 (installer wants it this way).
} 
} Any ideas?  Kind of difficult to track the problem on the phone (and
} I have never had a problem like this on the machines I have used).
} 
} Sigh, this seems to be one of those days...
} 
}   -jm
} 
>-- End of excerpt from Jukka Marin