Yes most of the install media files for netbsd >1.5.x dont work for many 
power pcs. Count your self lucky you didnt get a beige g3, those are 
horrific to boot, some people have reported some success netbooting them, 
but as far as i know, only from netbsd tftpd servers. Perhaps someone who 
know more about the problem can fix the .isos. Ad iterim, I have taken to 
using only HDDs to boot from. My thinking is perhaps I can get an IOMEGA 
ZIP floppy disk working at some point. With 96 MB of diskspace it would 
hold more than enough data to boostrap netbsd3.0, if we assume a ramdisk 
can be created. You can find the disks and drives cheaply at second hard 
stores and probably on comp.sys.forsale for only a few dollars.

It is possible to install netbsd3.x boot blocks to a second hdd, and 
install netbsd 3.0 binaries onto the second disk, reboot into 3.0.

Im sure many people would be happy to send you a netbsd ppc installed HDD 
if it comes down to that.

good luck.

On Fri, 28 Apr 2006, Jared D. McNeill wrote:

> Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 09:24:33 -0300
> From: Jared D. McNeill <jmcneill@invisible.ca>
> To: port-macppc@NetBSD.org
> Subject: NetBSD 3.0 and above broken on certain PowerPCs?
> 
> So, I managed to pick up a Performa 6360 (PowerPC 603ev, 136MB) for a good 
> price. I struggled a bit to get it to boot (finally having success with a 
> floppy disk). For some reason I didn't have luck booting 3.0 install floppies 
> (``READ TIMEOUT'' errors), so on a whim I wrote a 1.5.3 floppy disk. 
> Installed fine.
>
> At this point I downloaded a -current netbsd-INSTALL.gz to the hard disk, and 
> booted it. Configured the install etc, and walked away. When I checked on it 
> later, I noticed that it had failed to extract comp.tgz due to a bunch of 
> checksum errors. After retrying a few times, I gave up and skipped that set. 
> Once the system was installed, I had a pile of applications crash on startup 
> (dhclient, PAM libraries, etc). Presumably this was caused by checksum errors 
> while extracting base.tgz that I had missed.
>
> The next step was to boot from the 1.5.3 floppy again, and drop a 3.0 
> netbsd-INSTALL.gz on the disk. I had the same problems here as with -current.
>
> No problems with 2.1.
>
> Any ideas? I'd like to get to -current so I can use voodoofb(4) instead of 
> ofb(4) :)
>
> Cheers,
> Jared

Politicians are the same all over.  They promise to build a bridge even
where there is no river.
                 -- Nikita Khrushchev


Robin-David Hammond	KB3IEN
 	www.aresnyc.org.