As a new poster to this mailing list.. let me first say.. thank you to all
who replied and made suggestions to my plight.

As it turned out.. while my friend was assisting me manually tweek the
partitions for my drive... she accidently overlooked a number or two....
here's the setup that caused the problem.. followed by the corrected one
that now works perfectly.

OLD SETUP

6 partitions:
#        size   offset     fstype   [fsize bsize   cpg]
  a:  1028097       63     4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.    0*-
1019)
  b:   525168 16193520       swap                        # (Cyl.16065 -
16585)
  c: 35433153       63     unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0*-
35151)
  d: 35433216        0     unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 -
35151)
  e: 18714528 16718688     4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.16586 -
35151)
  f: 15689520  1028160      MSDOS                        # (Cyl. 1020 -
16584)


NEW SETUP

6 partitions:
#        size   offset     fstype   [fsize bsize   cpg]
  a:  1028097       63     4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.    0*-
1019)
  b:   525168 16193520       swap                        # (Cyl. 16065 -
16585)
  c: 35433153       63     unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0*-
35151)
  d: 35433216        0     unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 -
35151)
  e: 18714528 16718688     4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl. 16586 -
35151)
  f: 15165360  1028160      MSDOS                        # (Cyl. 1020 -
16064)

Thanks again.