system hangs on; "Probing devices, please wait (this can take a while)... "

[Thomas Mueller]

Rich, if you can't get either the installation CD or live-file-system CD to 
boot (FreeBSD), maybe your computer is allergic to FreeBSD?  I've had that
problem with both FreeBSD and NetBSD on the older computer (Cx486DX-2 at
66 MHz; 1.2 GB hard drive).  One thing that could possibly help is if you
could get a custom installation kernel or running kernel, but you'd need
a different computer to build it on.  

Any way to cross-compile a FreeBSD kernel from NetBSD or Linux?  Does anybody
know?  NetBSD guide tells how to make customized installation kernels and
media, but I see nothing like that for FreeBSD.

You might read the sysinstall man page from FreeBSD web site.  Under NOTES

 This product is currently at the end of its life cycle and will eventu-
     ally be replaced.

Under BUGS, toward the end

     This utility is a prototype which lasted several years past its expira-
     tion date and is greatly in need of death.

I guess you and I both agree on this last statement.  I also have to say that
splitting the installation sets into 1392 KB chunks like base.aa, base.ab, 
and so on, is much less user-friendly and more error-prone than one .tgz or
.tbz file for each installation set: base.tgz, etc.tgz, man.tgz and so on.

Tom