Cannot Boot 5.4

Bill Schmitt (SW) software at schmittnet.com
Sat Oct 1 11:20:55 PDT 2005


I have a 300MHz Gateway that was resurrected with new memory (128MB) and 
an additional Maxtor 60GB IDE hard disk to run FBSD about a year and a 
half ago. At the time, when I tried to install an early 5.x release (I 
don't recall which), I could boot the CD and go through the 
installation, but the machine hung on the subsequent boot from the Hard 
Disk. I tried 4.10, and it did the same thing, but I managed to install 
4.9 and have run that ever since. booting from the original Maxtor 4.7GB 
(configured as the master) IDE drive with most storage on the newer 
drive that I added. This week, the added (60GB) drive started sending 
out error messages, and fsck just cycled through hours of fixes and told 
me to run itself again when it completed.

I've purchased a new 80GB hard disk and decided to try to install 5.4 
again. I installed the new disk in place of the original 4.7GB drive 
with the dying drive left as a slave in the hopes that I might be able 
to retrieve something from it. When I boot from the 5.4 ISO image, the 
systems messages scroll through until the devices are recognized. The 
last three lines listed are:

ad0: 78533MB <HDS728080PLAT20/PF20A2B> [159560/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA33
ad1: 58644MB <Maxtor 6Y060l0/YAR41BW0> [119150/16/63] at ata0-slave UDMA33
acd0: <TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1102/1426> at ata1-master P104

At that point, it hangs and I see no activity at all. I've tried the 
Boot FreeBSD (default), Boot FreeBSD with ACPI disabled options., and 
Boot FreeBSD in Safe Mode options, but all have the same results.

Before I go back to 4.9, can anyone suggest steps to resolve this or 
point me to a resource that would help me resolve it?

Bill



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