The FreeBSD 7.4-BETA1 CD wont boot properly on this machine

[Chris Rees]

On 19 December 2010 19:55, Torfinn Ingolfsen
<torfinn.ingolfsen at broadpark.no> wrote:
> Hi,
> I am trying to install FreeBSD 7.4-BETA1 / amd64 on this[1] machine.
> The machine doesn't have a CD drive built-in, so I am using a Plextor
> PX-608CU external DVD writer which connects via usb as the CD drive to
> install from. I use the FreeBSD-7.4-BETA1-amd64-disc1.iso, which is burned
> to a CD.
> After powering on the machine, I press F8, get a nice little bootmenu,
> select the Plextor drive, and off we go. The kernel boots, and
> everything is great.
> But, after detecting the hard drive (ad4, ok it's really a SSD) and the
> cd drive, it just spits out messages like these:
> run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 60 seconds for xpt_config
> run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 120 seconds for xpt_config
> run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 180 seconds for xpt_config
> run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 240 seconds for xpt_config
>
> and after spitting out one more message  (the one for 300 seconds), it just
> sits there. Booting with verbose doesn't give men any more messages related
> to this. I've tried the -bootonly CD too - it has the same problem.
> Yes, the sha256 checksums on the files verifies a-ok, the CD's can be mounted
>  in FreeBSD, etc.
> I even mad a usb memory stick image of the -disc1 and booted the machine from that,
> and it has the same problem (the run_interrupt... messages).
>
> Kicker: the machine boots nicely from a FreeBSD 8.1-release (amd64) CD.
> Also tried with a OpenBSD 4.8 (amd64) install CD, yep - it also boots nicely.
>
> So, any hints on how to get FreeBSD 7.4-BETA1 onto this machine?
>
> References:
> 1) http://sites.google.com/site/tingox/asus_v7-p7h55e
> --
> Regards,
> Torfinn Ingolfsen

Did you try installing using a different computer onto that hard drive?

Is the hardware supported by 7.x
(http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.3R/hardware.html for pointers)

Is there a reason you want 7.4 rather than 8.1?

Chris