I'm not sure if I've got this sorted in my head yet ....
but this is what I'm doing and how I'm doing it :

I've netbooted marvin (swap doesn't work yet ...
few misc. errors during startup). I can login,
manipulate files & dirs, even run tar !
(WOW ... impressive ... the hdd in the dx40 can't keep up:)
I've got the external syquest drive connected,
and I can mount/umount it, format it ... the whole thing.

But...I can't seem to boot from it.
(and this is the bit where my understanding is a bit ... flaky:)

To make this work, I gather that I need to do the following:
1. newfs sd0   (geometry & partition info is in /etc/disktab right?)
2. unpack all the current tarballs to /mnt/syquest
3. modify the necessary /etc/* config files.
4. copy my new kernel (4000-100) to /mnt/syquest
5. copy /usr/mdec/boot to /mnt/syquest/boot  (size is 60/70K)
6. umount /mnt/syquest
7. disklabel -B sdo -b /usr/mdec/sdboot

Have I got the right idea?

If I have, then I guess that I haven't got the correct bootblocks.
My guess is the only way I'm going to be able to make them is
to get the compiler running!  (I don't know much about that either)

Any suggestions?

Marcus.