Frank Petitjean wrote:
> Is there a fail safe mode on Net BSD ?

No.  AIUI, "fail safe" mode in Windows disables some drivers at boot time.
 In NetBSD, the drivers are resident in the kernel and become active when
the kernel finds suitable hardware for them.  To disable a driver, one
builds a kernel without it.  

Reading over this thread, it looks to me that Manuel, whom you should
trust, suspects NetBSD can't use your hardware for reasons that remain
mysterious.  He suggested it might be "in the area of power management";
maybe there are BIOS settings you can change that might help.  

You mentioned you can copy files from the CD in Linux.  You could also try
"tar -t" after booting the NetBSD install CD.  The installer is just a
shell script; you can interrupt it with ^Z and experiment.  I'm not sure
what that would tell you, though, that you don't already know.  

If that doesn't help, unfortunately, it looks like you're at a dead end
with this device until someone figures out what the problem is.  

HTH.

--jkl