I was hoping that I could use slip (like I have done many times before
with 1.4.x and 1.5.x) to install 1.6.1_RC2. (I modified sysinstall to not
ignore "sl".)

I saw several months ago that I could not do slip from 1.5.x to a 1.6 box.
Now, I see that 1.6 to 1.6 doesn't work either.

Can someone look at NetBSD Problem Report #18799?
http://www.NetBSD.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=18799

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://bsd.reedmedia.net/

p.s. Hmmm... my next option to install NetBSD is to boot with some
other OS rescue disk that supports my NIC or slip and then make a
partition, and then transfer the sets to it. But then again I do need
network access for later stuff :(

Time to try some different pcmcia cards ...