Just in case this provides a helpful hint to anyone:
One of my friends recently tried to boot NetBSD on a HP laptop.
Specifically, one of the Pavillion zx5000 series.  The only kernels
that worked were the GENERIC_TINY kernel, and the GENERIC.MP kernel.
All the others we tried would hang just after looking for isapnp devices.
The GENERIC.MP kernel booted, but the keyboard was non-functional.
	Since then, he has exchanged the laptop, so I can't provide more info,
but if anyone tries to use one of those laptop's maybe this'll point them
in the right direction.

eric