> Absolutely.  I neglected to mention that -- I have the same symptoms as you
> with  1.5-based kernels, but that's a known problem with the 4.1.8 BootROM
> update.  The patches to support that BootROM version were never pulled down
> to the 1.5 branch.
> 

I seemed to recall something like that which is why I started with the 1.4.3
sets/kernel.  That gave me the same buggers as when I pulled down the 1.5.2
sets and worked with them:

isnt> what netbsd*
netbsd
        NetBSD 1.4.3 (GENERIC) #20: Sat Nov  4 16:42:34 MET 2000

isnt> what netbsd*
netbsd
        NetBSD 1.5.2 (GENERIC) #10: Sat Aug 18 14:29:39 PDT 2001

> Nevertheless, the bootpd problem still exists when using the the 1.5-based
> ofwboot.xcf (version 1.2) since it never even loads.

I used both versions of ofwboot.xcf (1.4 & 1.5)....?