someone has posted that the netbsd 1.4 failure is particular to an r4000
decstation, which happens to be the case.. 

On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Simon Burge wrote:
> At my old job I had a point-to-point network between a /260 running
> Ultrix and a /240 with NetBSD (1.4.<something>) with DEFTAs.  From
> memory, I only saw a "Link Unavailable"/"Link Available" pair of
> messages during a boot and none thereafter.  So it used to work
> ok with a NetBSD of the vintage you're using.
> 
> I don't know enough about FDDI to know if using a loop like you are
> would cause problems.  Can you connect two boxes together and try that?

the loop should work, and packets do get through occasionally. The card 
itself will complain and flash some LEDs if i change the cable configuration,
and it glows a happy green with the setup i have now, so i presume it is 
a sufficient configuration. i did not get the opportunity to try the 
suggestion of updating the driver to incorporate a fix for r4k machines, 
but i hope to soon.
isildur