I've got two boxes, a 5000/25 and a 5000/240. I went to install 1.4 on both
last night, and failed both times.

Neither machine would successfully TFTP boot the install image. The 5000/25
(PROM version KN02-CA 2.0m), after some tinkering, would boot the
smallnet.ecoff kernel, and mount the diskimage via NFS, but would stop with
an error message from pax about a file being modified during copy, right
after the filesystems are newfs'ed and before the sets are selected. I seem
to recall seeing something about this on the list, but couldn't find it in
the archives.

The 5000/240 is KN03-AA v5.1b, noted as not being able to TFTP boot. Sure
enough, it wouldn't TFTP the smallnet.ecoff kernel either. I've got a MOP
server on the Linux box I've been using as a server, and had, once upon a
time, a mopa.out utility to turn an a.out image into one suitable for MOP
loading, but couldn't find the equivalent for ECOFF images. If I can get the
/25 working, this isn't a big problem - I'll hang the disk from the /240 on
it and install that way. Still, a MOP-format bootable would be nice for
folks who don't have that option easily available.