I have had the same 1GB boundary installation problem on a Seagate 2.2GB drive.

I have now successfully installed NetBSD-1.3 with swap, root, and user
partitions below 1GB. I did try installing with a usr partition crossing
the 1GB boundary and had SCSIRead/Write errors during the installation. I
also tried moving all 3 partitions above 1GB with similar problems.

I used Mkfs-1.45 and Installer-1.1g on an LCII-4/40 with a 2.2GB external.