> The one with least impact on the existing installation is the
> following, I think:
> 
> 	1) make a new filesystem on a Zip disc with the NetBSD
> 	newfs command (not with the Mkfs utility).

hmm, this is becoming more of a problem than i thought.  I cannot for
the life of me get the thing going. I get tones of "not a character
device" erros, and at every turn, ther'se 

sd2(ncrscsi0:5:0): illegal request data = ff fe 01 03 8f 01 00 db 6a b6
db 6d b6 db b6 db b6 db
 sd2: could not modesense(4); using fictitiuos geometry.

The assorted variations i've tried for newfs don't seem to help, eithr.
using th results from disklabel, i tried

newfs -S 512 -s 196608 -u 32 -t 64 /dev/sd2a

as well as just 

newfs /dev/sd2a

I get file systems that i can mount in single user (thoguh with all the
errors).  df reports correctly the size of the disk.  But when i try
under multiuser, it gives the error messages and throws itself into the
debugger.

speaking of which, what *should* i do when i land in the debugger?  all
i've found so far is the power switch.

anyway, the message when crashing is

df panic: pmap_alloc_pv: pgi_nfree inconsistent
stopped at_Deb +0x6: unlk ag

which seems to match other messages while formatiing claiming that
cylinder counts mismatch.

help!  i've run out of ideas

rick