Hi,

gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:
>   Partition table:
>   0: sysid 169 (NetBSD)
>       start 63, size 17796014 (8689 MB), flag 0x80
>           beg: cylinder    0, head   0, sector  0
>           end: cylinder  961, head  17, sector 34
>   1: <UNUSED>
>   2: <UNUSED>
>   3: <UNUSED>

[...]

> Note that both my MBR and my disklabel claim that a: starts at
> sector 63, unlike Anne's problematic disk.

No, it doesn't.  The MBR bootcode uses the beg cylinder/head/sector
numbers for
reading the active partition's first sector (there are exceptions, but
they don't
come into play here).  And this data isn't correct in your MBR.  (I've
no idea
how this data arrived on your drive, short of you entering it
deliberately,
(which I tend to doubt)).

Anyway, try to change these values to cylinder 0, head 1, sector 1 and
try again.
Note that unlike Anne, you don't have to reinstall the disklabel after
that
change.

Ciao,
Wolfgang
-- 
ws@TooLs.DE     Wolfgang Solfrank, TooLs GmbH 	+49-228-985800