>> If I make a CD (ISO format) of the distribution, can I boot off of
>> it and install that way?
>
> Yes, that ought to work, but I don't know if anyone has ever tried it.
>
> -- Dan
>
I've tried it on my iMac . Its not working for me. If any one has it working
I would like to know what firmware version you have,the output of printenv
and a look at the first few blocks of your ide drive. I can see that
installboot -v /mnt/boot /mnt/usr/mdec/bootxx /dev/rwd0c goes out and
creates what looks like a mac partition table  so that you have this :-
Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/ata0.0' (/dev/hda)
 #:                type name       length   base       ( size )
 1: Apple_partition_map Apple           2 @ 1
 2:       NetBSD/macppc NetBSD 2147483647 @ 4          (1024.0G)

A real partition table with a 32Mb slice for macos looks like :-

Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/ata0.0' (/dev/hda)
 #:                type name             length   base    ( size )
 1: Apple_partition_map Apple                63 @ 1
 2:    Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh            54 @ 64
 3:    Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh            74 @ 118
 4:       Apple_Patches Patch Partition     512 @ 192
 5:           Apple_HFS untitled          65536 @ 704     ( 32.0M)
 6:          Apple_Free Extra           4058496 @ 66240   (  1.9G)

BTW to answer my own post before "What are those numbers that installboot -v
print out?" they are the block numbers that map to the file boot that lives
in the root file system so that boot loaders can find this file and loadit
with out knowing about the structure of the file systems. I need to do more
work understanding this - however my current belief is that the OFW is
having trouble with the constructed partition table is some manner - maybe
apple has changed something that the original author didn't allow for ?
   I think it would be nice to get netbsd to live with apples partition
struct a little better, since apple has had AUX for years and now MacOS X
both that live inside the apple partition struct we should be able to follow
suit which might make this a little more stable?

    Cheers
        Mark :)