Install failure for 7.0-RELEASE (Need help!)

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

This is drivin' me nuts.  I hope somebody can pass me a clue.

I have an older system that I've been running 6.1-RELEASE on for a
long long time now.  I want to upgrade it to run 7.0-RELEASE.
(CPU => AMD Athlon XP 2000, Motherboard => ASUS A7N266-VM/AA.)

OK, so I install a new hard drive (known good /practically new) and
I'm ready to do a fresh install of 7.0-RELEASE onto this fresh new
blank drive.

The problem is that the bleedin' *&^$#@*!^% 7.0-RELEASE install disk (#1)
seems to be trying to do some new and fancy schmancy stuff as regards to
reading stuff off the installation CD that prior releases did not do.
(I've checked with the exact same hardware, and I can still boot/install
from an old 6.1-RELEASE CD with no problems.  So the software has changed,
obviously, and not in a good way.)

Basically, I get down past the so-called "Stage 3 boot loader prompt"
and then I'm actually booting the 7.0 OS from the CD ROM drive and
regardless of which CD ROM drive I use... I've already tried several...
and regardless of which burned copy of 7.0-RELEASE install disk #1 I
try to use (I have tried at least two... one know to be good from a
prior install on a different machine) I always get the same results...

acd0: CDROM <ATAPI CD-ROM MAX 58X/Ver9.05N> at ata1-master UDMA33
acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG ILLEGAL REQUEST asc=0x64 ascq=0x00
GEOM_LABEL: Label for provider acd0 is iso9660/FreeBSD_Install.
acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG ILLEGAL REQUEST asc=0x64 ascq=0x00


... whreupon the install process dies with some other messages that
I doubt are of any importance to what is happening here.  The real problem
seems to clearly be the failure of these big reads off the CD that this
new 7.0-RELEASE is trying to do as part of the install process.

Can anybody help?

I've been Googling around for "acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG ILLEGAL REQUEST"
for half the day already and I'm no wiser about this problem than when
I started.

What the bleep does this message actually mean?  And what the devil is
actually causing it?  More importantly, how can I get it to go away so
that I can just simply complete my install of 7.0-RELEASE onto this
system?

A little help would be appreciated.


Regards,
rfg


P.S.  Before anybody asks to see my dmesg output, please remember that
I'm trying to do an install, and I'm not even getting fully booted up.
So I have no way to capture, let alone share a dmesg log.