Hello David,

   DL> Yes, you can start a filesystem in sector zero.

Thanks.

   DL> That is an entirely different question....

Just thought I'd sneak it in there ;-)

   DL> The kernel has code for accessing filesystems byte-swapped.
     > But there is no code for reading byte-swapped netbsd labels.

Do disklabels vary between ports, or just between endian types?  For
example, would macppc be able to read a data disk written by sparc64
(both big-endian)?

   DL> If you need more than one filesystem you might actually be
     > better of using fdisk, putting a single filesystem in each mbr
     > partition and relying on the code that supports USB sticks
     > (etc) to be able to find the partitions!

I'm happy for each disk to contain a single filesystem, but your
mention of USB sticks is interesting.  Can they be readily moved
between machines running different ports of NetBSD?

Thanks,
  - Andy Ball