for the archives: at some point the contents of
the install floppy got copied to pete's c:\ drive
(hence the using sdC0!dos!plan9.ini message).

the install plan9.ini and a normal boot plan9.ini
differ in important ways (like where root is from
by default, etc.).  we fixed the problem by
renaming c:\plan9.ini to something else so that
the plan9.ini on 9fat gets found.

russ