FreeBSD 7.0 SATA Controller

[Shaun Sabo]

I checked to make sure that the hard disks are not in raid configuration and
there are not. i also checked and my bios are at the latest version
available (A11). also this is an XPS 600 not 700 and i have the correct
users manual in paper and digital formats. how would you like the dmesg to
be presented? i dont think i have any way to writing it to a thumb drive or
such devices from the installer. should i just take digital pictures?

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu at freebsd.org> wrote:

> On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 01:34:53PM -0400, Shaun Sabo wrote:
> > Im trying to install FreeBSD 7.0 on a Dell XPS 600 desktop machine and
> im
> > having a lot of trouble with this. First I could not use USB keyboards
> with
> > the installer program (which is fine, i dont mind switching to PS2).
> then
> > once i got into the sysinstaller it does not detect my Hard Disks. i
> also
> > tried installing an old 6.2 cd that i had sitting around and remaking
> world
> > and kernel but when i installed the kernel and restarted to go into
> single
> > user mode the system could not mount the root filesystem. the
> motherboard im
> > using is a nvidia nforce4 with Serial ATA hard disks. Does anyone know
> how
> > to get FreeBSD 7.0 to recognize my hard drives?
>
> Re: USB keyboard: USB support on FreeBSD is spotty.  That said, I've
> never run into problems getting FreeBSD to detect and use a USB keyboard
> (other USB devices are a different story).  You'd need to provide some
> dmesg(8) output to verify, but I know that's going to be difficult until
> you can get FreeBSD installed.
>
> Re: SATA disks: I can assure you that FreeBSD works fine with SATA disks
> connected to an nForce 4 chipset, because I've used them myself with no
> issue.  Chances are there's a BIOS setting that's causing mayhem, or
> you may be using a RAID array of some sort (since the XPS700 is one of
> those "gamer lozlozlz" systems).
>
> The manual for this system is here:
>
> http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xps700/
>
> Screenshots of the BIOS are here:
>
> http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/09/04/Dell_XPS_700_review/5
>
> Are you using RAID at all on this system?  If so, chances are that's why
> it doesn't see your array.
>
> Finally, if available, I'd try a BIOS update.  Googling for results
> shows that system has quite a large number of issues with its BIOSes,
> and Dell has been fairly good about providing updates to fix problems.
>
> --
> | Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
> | Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
> | UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
> | Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
>
>