I am trying (well, preparing would be a better word) to make an alpha
bootable CD - and by this I mean a CD containing the data I want it
to contain, that can be booted on an alpha.

That is, "copy cdhdtape onto a cd and boot that" isn't the advice I
am looking for...

I understand how Suns boot, and enough about how x86's boot from CD
to make sun/x86 bootable CDs, but the alpha case (with NetBSD specifics)
has me a little confused.

Can someone confirm that the correct procedure ought to be:

Put a netbsd (or even perhaps several different netbsd's) in the root
of the CD (9660) filesystem (netbsd's that when booted will be able to
run in this environment - an instkernel is what I am likely to use
initially anyway, so the rest of the CD contents are irrelevant).

Put /usr/mdec/boot in the root of the CD as well.

Run installboot giving the image name, and bootxx_cd9660 as the args.

Is that all it should take?  (Aside from building the 9660 image,
copying the result onto a CD, ...)

I took a look at the way cdhdtape is built, but that didn't help, it is
using bootxx.old and installboot.old, and for me, that's no good 
(installboot.old doesn't have the -s option - and yes, multi-boot CDs
is the aim here).  It is also constricting a ustarfs image, though why
is hard to fathom (and doing so means that the image can't just be
mounted and examined, or even changed, which a ffs image could be).
Why is cdhdtape still using the "old" method of installboot (etc) ??

Lastly, have there been any significant changes to the boot code between
1.4 and -current ?   That is, would using 1.4 based bootxx_cd9660 and
boot be able to correctly boot a -current netbsd ?   (Alpha has the
advantage over 386 and sparc there that it has been ELF forever, I know
that 386 and sparc 1.4 based boot tools won't boot -current kernels).

Thanks,

kre