Once upon a time Jan Schaumann proclaimed:
> Why would NetBSD not run on this?

It might have something to do with this:
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2001/03/28/0006.html

PR:
http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=13310

I don't know if it has been fixed since, but I remember still having that problem on
my Dell Precision last year.  The solution suggested in the first link seems to work
fine however.