ATA_Identify timeout ERROR - using Tyan S5350 with FreeBSD 5.4 (problems booting - SATA hard disk not recognised) -

[Alan Jay]

Hi,

I just got a new Tyan S5350 using twin Xeon processors I am told this is now a
very standard motherboard.  

Unfortunately when I try to boot FreeBSD 5.4 Release I get the following
errors on the IDE/ATA/SATA connection.

The errors I get during boot up are as follows:

The hard disk is not recognised you get the error:

Ata0_master: Failure ATAPI_IDENTITY timeout (x3) Then
Ata1_master: Failure ATA_Identify timeout (x3)

This is true if I use a standard IDE drive (160Gb) or a SATA drive (250Gb).
The BIOS recognises the drives and is happy with them but the OS has this
problem. 

The board appears to use the Intel 6300SEB chip set using for the IDE/ATA/SATA

is it supported?  Or is there a problem with my motherboard?

The board we have is:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tigeri7320r_spec.html

If anyone is using this motherboard successfully please let me know so I can
organise a replacement.  

Any other help gratefully received.

Alan Jay 

PS The rest of the machine specs are - twin Xeon processor; 4 Gb RAM; Intel
Gigabit Network card in the PCI slot.  250Gb SATA drive. 

PPS Having looked around the lists there appear to be people who say this is
related to the issues described 5.2.1 release errata
(http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.2.1R/errata.html) 

PPPS loading in safe mode does work but it isn't a viable way to run a server
anyone got any ideas why this occurs and how to work around it the ideas in
the errata for 5.2.1 don't seem to work assuming that I have the syntax
correct in the /boot/loader.comf