OK, I fiddled.  I checked the file sizes and found that netbsd-rd was not 
  a multiple of 512... I added nulls and padded it to a multiple.  I booted 
  from tape again and had the same results.  I had mentioned previously 
  that I had been unable to dd _any_ files to my SCSI disk but I dug around 
  and found an executable at 1024 bits and it wrote just fine.  That at 
  least eliminated a drive error.
  
  Going back to the tape and checking various sources for MT I found that 
  my tape drive wasn't really forwarding during fsf and I couldn't even 
  cat/dd/or otherwise anything off it, not even tapeboot.  I am using a 
  tapedrive from a Sun386i extension module (tape drive w/SCSI adapter and 
  space for one HD) and I think it was having trouble communicating with 
  it?  It just didn't seem to want to respond politely after booting.  I'll 
  know more soon because..
  
  I got my 386i to be a little more agreeable and serve NFS for the NetBSD 
  system.  After booting from tape I mounted the 386i and installed the 
  miniroot from there.  That worked flawlessly and I was able to do the 
  rest of the install from there.  I did try getting a package from the 
  tape drive (just to check) but it was again unable to find anything.  The 
  drive space is cramped, but usable.
  
  Now that I have NetBSD working I'll try some reading/writing from the 
  tape drive to see if that's the problem.  6am rolled around jsut a little 
  too early to do that at the time ;)  I'll also try some more weof tests 
  and such....
  
  Thanks for all the help!
  -Adrian
  
  
  Tested the Sun Miniroot it booted fine. Then I booted from NetBSD Tape I 
  did the following as the instructions said.
  mt -f /dev/nrst0 rewind
  mt -f /dev/nrst0 fsf 2
  dd bs=32k if=/dev/nrst0 of=/dev/rsd0b got the following message:
  st0(si0:4:0) no data found requested size: 64(decimal) data=34 00 00 any 
  sugestions?
  -   Rahim Azizarab