> First thing: How do I format a drive from within NetBSD?

At the moment, you can't, unless some bright soul has come up with a tool
very recently. You need to use Apple HD SC Setup (and in particular a
patched version if the drive is not Apple-branded).

> Second: Would the 4 gig partition even work given the current state of the
> OS?

Sure. However, the Installer will definitely bug out on you. Get kern.tgz
on it, install base.tgz as far as it will go, then cpin the rest of the
packages, boot into NetBSD, and untar them on the flip side. The SCSI error 5
that you'll get during the initial installation is normal. Make sure you
*re-install* base.tgz on the flip side.

Alternatively, use sysinst, which, I have been assured by many better and
brighter than myself, deals much better with large hard drives.

-- 
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
 Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser@stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- The fact that it works is immaterial. -- L. Ogborn -------------------------