Does the NetBSD/i386 1.0 install really work with bad144?

I run the install script on a ESDI wd0, with NetBSD in the second
"DOS" partion and the 'no _automatic_ remapping' option set.  The
system looks fine before I reboot.  I can unmount the wd0, run fsck
/dev/rwd0a, disklabel, and "bad144 -a wd0 2342 34766 44434" just fine
by hand while the install floppy is mounted as "/".

Then I reboot for the kernel_copy phase and I get:

wd0: cannot find label (bad sector table corrupted)

followed by fsck failure.

If I go back to the install disks, do not perform the install and
instead just run "disklabel -w -B wd0 mywd" the filesystem is fine again
and if I have run bad144 to add blocks the table is OK too (I have tried
not entering blocks and the disklabel still vanishes).

Any ideas?

P.S.  I succeed in setting up the system without using bad144 and
      running badsect to trap the bad blocks, and only vnd0c swap
      space (had to hack the install script to accept a zero-sized
      wd0b partition) since there was a bad block in the swap space,
      but the performance was terrible while using X11 due to slow
      paging.