Aha.

You are correct, I was speaking to a separate problem (that NetBSD
doesn't know how to change the hardware clock's idea of the date).
Just tried your steps on an i386 1.5W machine with the same results
(can't get the date past 1933). I would say this is a problem in
ntpd, though.

(It also may *not* be specific to our platform, but rather a problem
in the protocol, btw. I haven't looked at the code, though.)

-- 
       ~ g r @ eclipsed.net