> Perhaps you already did this and I just missed seeing it, but have
> you tried the original image on a different diskette?

No - but see below.

> Perhaps the original diskette was simply written incorrectly (there's
> no parity on the cable between the floppy controller and the floppy
> drive itself, is there?

I don't know - anyone here know about SPARCstation floppes?  I suppose
I really ought to ask that on port-sparc, but I don't think that's it,
because, well, see below. :-)

> ).  Granted, it's fabulously unlikely, but it does happen, thus it
> has to happen to *someone*.

True.

However, I tried both floppy images multiple times, rewriting the same
floppy each time, and the behavior correlated perfectly with the floppy
image I put on the disk.  Thus, whatever it is, it's not a one-time
thing like a sector mis-written by chance.  (I suppose one could posit
a data-dependent bug in the floppy; to test that I suppose I'd have to
bash the "working" floppy image by hand to change exactly and only the
size value for netbsd.gz and try it again - then the data sectors will
be sure to have identical contents.)

I'll play with this more on Monday and report to the list.

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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