This probably should really be on netbsd-help@netbsd.org, rather than
port-i386...but I'm ethically opposed to cross-posting, and felt it better
to post any answers in the same medium as the question.  (^&

The main help that I can offer is to point out that NetBSD drive numbers
don't necessarily correspond to SCSI ID's (etc.).  sd0 is the frist SCSI
drive found, sd1 is the next, and so on.  So, if you have 3 SCSI drives,
then at most you should have sd0, sd1, and sd2.  In fact, if you look at
the dmesg output, there is an sd2, at scsibus0, target 5---almost
certainly this is your CDROM.

Why it's not (or whether it should be) recognized as a cd? rather than
sd?, I'm not sure.  (My ATAPI drive comes up as a cd? unit.)


That about exhausts my expertise.  If no one else can suggest further what
to make of it, there are some basic things to try:

 ** booting with/without anything in the CD bay;
 ** check cable connections;
 ** make SURE that the SCSI chain is terminated properly;
 ** if it's SCSI2, is the cable unshielded? is it perhaps too long?
 ** boot with some other OS and see if _it_ can recognize the CD.


The fact that you are getting errors in dmesg about the SCSI card not
responding when it gets to sd2 (but working fine up to then), and sd2
returning ``nonsense'' makes me tend to suspect some kind of hardware
problem...  If the CDROM itself is believed to be okay, then something
about the cabling (one of the middle three) would be my guess.


All that said, bear in mind my signature/disclaimer:


  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  --rkr@rkr.kcnet.com