James: Yep, if the problem you're having under FreeBSD is that the CD drive doesn't attach (other than as a ugen), then simply booting a -current NetBSD kernel should be a sufficient test. Even an INSTALL kernel should suffice, because it has USB and enough drivers to install from most media. So I'd suggest burning this or this to a CD (with “floppy disk emulation”). Alternatively, if you have a floppy drive, you could write the two corresponding 1.44MB images to floppies and boot those.