OS install floppy hangs during boot on Bochs 1.4.1

I find that the boot floppy hangs fairly early on when used in a
Bochs emulated PC.  Details below; any suggestions would be
appreciated.

I have consulted the Wiki page on installation troubleshooting and
searched the comp.os.plan9 archives at Google; the topic of
running in Bochs seems to come up in the newsgroup now and then
(usually with such phrases as "not working"), but I find nothing
about Bochs more recent than late 2001, and nothing concerning
this specific hanging problem, in emulators or otherwise.  (Note
also that this problem might well be due to some newbie error(s)
on my part.)

The underlying machine is an x86 Linux box with kernel 2.4.17 and
glibc 2.2.4.  The Linux system was built by hand, that is, not
installed from a distribution such as RedHat, Slackware, etc.. 
The emulator is Bochs 1.4.1; the behaviour described below occurs
with both VGA BIOSes shipped with that version.

Booting the emulated machine from 9disk.flp looks like this:

------------------------------8<------------------------------
PBS...Plan 9 from Bell Labs
using fd0!dos!plan9.ini
.dev A0 port 1F0 config 0040 capabilities 0000 mwdma 0000
found 9pcflop.gz
.gz.............................................................................
.............................................................................124
0730 => 711025+1093800+56912=1861737
entry: 80100020
cpu0: 2MHz GenuineIntel P5 (cpuid: AX 0x0513 DX 0x0011)
4575 free pages, 18300K bytes, 96700K swap
ilock:: ad de ad de 06 00 00 00 3b 89 18 80 d8 77 2c 80 01 00 00 00 70 e5 00 80 
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
------------------------------8<------------------------------

At this point the emulated machine seems to hang.  Sometimes it
produces a second ilock: blurb such as the above; sometimes it
produces the character 'p'.  (Never both, but sometimes neither.)

Bochs is, of course, quite slow, and sometimes seems to hang when
in fact it's just taking its sweet time to do something.  For
certainty, I let it sit at the point shown above for about three
hours; no further output appeared in that time.

It may be that the floppy image I have was damaged during
download; perhaps someone could check that their copy has MD5 hash
    575bb7ddd7403718fed4e3807235d4ca  9disk.flp
(Indeed, perhaps the MD5 hashes should be on the download pages.) 
However, I think such a problem is improbable: I have tested the
image by writing it to a floppy and booting the real machine
therewith; in that scenario, it proceeds happily past the point of
failure above.  (It says "kfs...", for example.)  I conclude that
the floppy image is probably fine, and that something strange is
happening in the Bochs environment specifically.

Booting the emulated machine from plan9.iso is also unsuccessful,
in what I assume to be yet another unrelated problem:

------------------------------8<------------------------------
PBS...Plan 9 from Bell Labs
dev A0 port 1F0 config 0040 capabilities 0000 mwdma 0000
Boot devices: fd0 fd1
boot from:
------------------------------8<------------------------------

The emulated CD-ROM drive is the slave on the primary controller,
so I try...

------------------------------8<------------------------------
boot from: sdC1!cdboot!plan9.ini
boot from:
------------------------------8<------------------------------

... with, as you see, no luck (but also with no helpful error
message <shakes fist>).  Presumably the fact that sdC1 is not
listed as one of the possible boot devices is significant.

Incidentally, I do not find in the installation documentation any
description of what to type at a "boot from:" prompt.  Is my guess
above correct?  Is this documented anywhere else?

-- 
Steven Taschuk           | Kinsley's Law: "Every public
staschuk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx |  frenzy produces legislation
                         |  purporting to address it."