>today i tried to help a friend installing the latest NetBSD/i386 snapshot
>on his then only M$ windows 98 running machine. He has used to NetBSD/i386
>so we didn't suspected any problems.... the following problems arose and
>made him decide to install M$ win again on his machine for he had to work
>the next day again :(
>
>1) The program `dosboot' does run on win98's DOS mode but crashes as soon
>as the control is transfered to NetBSD's kernel. The bootfloppies worked OK
>but are a nuisance.

strangely enough, i tried almost exactly the same thing at random last
night.  when booting the machine, try

	(1) boot into "protected mode command prompt"
	(2) run dosboot -i
	(3) boot the netbsd kernel with -v

that made my friend's screwed up dell laptop much happier.

>2) The `sysinst' program doesn't add the other partitions on the same disk
>you would like to use for NetBSD, making it impossible to use install sets
>from the other partitions nor from the other harddiscs without hacking
>around with `mbrlabel -w' etc.... Isn't it a good idea to add the other
>partitions standard to the disklabel for installing? and what about the
>same for installing from other harddiscs ?

if they other partitions already contain other operating systems (eg
windows or linux), then fdisk ought to be able to show you the
placement of at least some of those partitions which you can add to
your disklabel at your convenience later.

-- 
|-----< "CODE WARRIOR" >-----|
codewarrior@daemon.org             * "ah!  i see you have the internet
twofsonet@graffiti.com (Andrew Brown)                that goes *ping*!"
andrew@crossbar.com       * "information is power -- share the wealth."