>  Is it possible to boot NetBSD/pmax from a tape drive?  If so, how 
>painful would this be? 

hi,

i never ported the 4.4bsd tape bootblocks to NetBSD, as I've never
had a tape to try booting off.   If someone wants to give me 
(or some other volunteer) a tape drive, it can be made painless.

Otherwise, the pain it's likely to be up there with, oh,
kidneystones...

(Of course, I could be wrong; Rick and Ralph's 4.4bsd code may "just work",
but somehow I doubt it.  In fact, I doubt that source for buildable pmax
bootblocks _ever_ made it into the NetBSD source tree...)