Weird incompatibility of compaq evo 510 PCs

[vittorio]

Alle 14:22, mercoledì 12 ottobre 2005, Lowell Gilbert ha scritto:
> Vittorio <vdemart1 at tin.it> writes:
> > At office I have an old compaq 450 (p3, 450MHz,128MB) working as a
> > postgresql 8.03  server under freebsd 5.4.
> > Now having the chance of
> > substituting it with a newer Compaq Evo 510 (p4,2,8 GHz, 512MB) to be
> > on the safe side I tested this new pc trying to run freesbie 1.1 on it
> > from a CD. Unfortunately after showing the usual line with
> > root at casad'amico etc.. a cryptic message of fatal error popped up
> > saying something like:
> >
> > int=0000000d err=00000000 efl=00030246
> > eip=00003034 eax=0000205d
> > ebx=00000004
> >
> > etc, etc.
> >
> > Furthermore,
> > identical  diagnostics popped up trying to boot FreeBSD from the
> > primary hd of the old pc mounted on this new one.
> > Thinking that there
> > was something  wrong with that specific box only I tried:
> > a) to boot
> > freesbie on other compaq evo 510 in my office but all of them failed to
> > boot with the same (or similar??) diagnostics;
> > b) the freesbie cd is ok
> > having tested it on other boxes;
> > b) using a cd for the installation of
> > M$ windows on the evo 510 it all works like a charm and everything is
> > installed.
> >
> > My questions are:
> > 1) Is this a known incompatibility of the
> > Compaq evo 510 PCs ( a search in the internet didn't shed any light on
> > it!);
> > 2) Is there any way to overcome the problem and how?
>
> Try to install FreeBSD 6.0 on one of these machines.
> It's more likely to work, and if it doesn't, it is likely to give more
> information about what is wrong.
>
> The information you gave definitely isn't enough to go on.

I had a go at freebsd 6.0-beta5 on the same compaq evo 510 to no avail. Same 
results. A total failure with the same diagnostics. Nothing more .....
Whilst .... both netbsd and openbsd work flawlessly. I'll switch to one of 
them.
Ciao
Vittorio