>> I HAVE BEEN AN RUNNING AN OLD COMPAQ 266 WITH  A CHEAP 60GB MAXTOR
>> DRIVE FOR A SOME TIME ON NETBSD 1.6 WITH NO ISSUES.
> There are no issues with other architectures; just VAX.

I wouldn't go that far.  I've seen related issues with the sparc and
i386 ports.

> Although some other architectures are limited about the size of the
> partition which is used for booting.

In at least one case - the sparc port, and only some machines (I
suspect it's a ROM rev issue) - the partition _size_ is irrelevant;
what matters is where the blocks are.  All the blocks accessed before
the kernel gains control must be in the first 1G of the drive.
(Arranging this is rather difficult unless the whole partition fits
within that range, but it can be done - and in particular, I have seen
it happen by coincidence; just because "it's always worked" doesn't, by
itself, mean the issue isn't waiting to bite you.)  This is the
6-byte-vs-10-byte CDB issue.

On the i386 I understand the issues less, but suspect something similar
is at work; I know that I've had it fail with a single big partition
covering most of the disk and work with a small boot partition at the
beginning and then a big root partition.  (This is with IDE drives;
with SCSI drives, of course, the same CDB size issue potentially
arises.)

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