problem with 4.4 installboot

[Josh Grosse]

For Michael, and those on the Newbies-list following his installboot problem:

He sent me his bsd.rd, and I examined the biosboot and second stage boot
loader, and ran a test install with it, too.  No trouble was found.  AFAICT,
there is no problem with his CD image.

Because biosboot was installed and executing properly ("ERR M" won't be 
produced without that), and the second stage boot loader not only had the
proper magic number in it's first sector (0x7F "ELF"), and worked properly in
my test install, I now suspect a BIOS limitation reaching the disk sectors
containing the second stage boot loader (/boot).  Prior to OpenBSD 3.5, there
was a software limitation requiring /boot be located within the first 8.4GB of
the hard drive.  However, BIOS limitations (such as 504MB, 2GB, 4GB, 8.4GB,
32GB, 64GB, etc.) are the most likely reason for the problem.

It is my guess -- it's just a guess -- that each time a ramdisk kernel copies
/usr/mdec/boot to the hard drive's /boot, it's just luck where the LBAs end up
residing; sometimes below the BIOS limit, sometimes, unluckily above.

I've asked Michael to share the starting and ending LBAs of his "a" partition;
it may cross one of these boundaries of his hard drive.