We have a utility that disklabels and newfs's hard drives on "new"
(unconfigured) machines over the network, runs installboot on them, and
copies a default filesystem onto them. This allows us to quickly generate
hard disks with required software under NetBSD.

There are two areas where we are seeing problems (motherboard is GigaByte
GA-6BX7, hard disk is Maxtor 60GB)
 - the 'newfs' command has radically different completion times
 - depending on hard disk setup in BIOS, the system boots the operating
system, or does not.

1. Differing times
==================
If we take a new (never formatted) Maxtor drive, disklabel it and run newfs
on the largest partition, it takes around 420s. (We have 75G drives that
format in 200s, so this seems very long!). Then if we take the same drive,
and run 'newfs' again on it, sometimes we get 420s, and sometimes 180s.
Then, from the 3rd time we 'newfs' it onwards, we get 180s consistently.
Does anybody know what the reason for this could be?

2. Bootup from Installed Hard Drive Fails
=========================================
If we allow our BIOS to autodetect the hard drive, it correctly recognises
60GB, norma mode. We then disklabel, newfs, installboot, install the
filesystems, and reboot. We get the characteristic "No Operating System
Found" message that indicates there are no boot blocks on the drive.

However, if we force the BIOS to configure the drive as an 8GB, normal mode,
then disklabel and newfs it as a 60GB, installboot, install the filesystems,
and reboot, NetBSD happily boots up and runs correctly.

Could anybody suggest why either of these stange situations are manifesting?
We have performed the same test, with same results, with a different
motherboard, as well as a different hard drive, so we have eliminated either
of these as the problem.

Thanks
 Bruce Martin