amd64/123495: 7.0 AMD64 doesn't install on a Dell SC1435

[Randy Schultz]

>Number:         123495
>Category:       amd64
>Synopsis:       7.0 AMD64 doesn't install on a Dell SC1435
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-amd64
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Wed May 07 16:30:01 UTC 2008
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Randy Schultz
>Release:        7.0 AMD64
>Organization:
Earlham College
>Environment:
Sorry, cannot.  Can't get it to install.  ;>
>Description:
I believe this may be additional information for PR #122572.

Hardware:
Dell SC1435, twin Hitachi UltraStar 750 GB SATA-II drives plugged right into the mobo with SATA-II cables.  For completeness, the system also has 1 dual-core AMD Opteron, 2 GB RAM, and a SCSI card plugged into it.

FBSD 6.x AMD64 works great on this system, as does centos linux.  When I try to install 7.0 (AMD64 of course), on boot (off the cdrom) I notice:
   ad4: DMA limited to UDMA33, device found non-ATA66 cable

Not sure if that is an important clue but it seems to be.  I know my cables are SATA-II, FWIW.

Install jams along nicely until it actually tries to write distributions to the drives.  The format piece works well w/o errors that I have seen.  To use my example, as soon as it started writing the base system to the drive it started erroring out.  Here is a piece of what I captured:
   ...
   ./usr/sbin/spkrtest
   ./usr/sbin/srpay
   NMI ISA 30, EINSA Mlf fI
   SA 20, EISA ff
   NMI ISA 30, EISNAM If ISfA
   20, EISA ff
   ad4: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=34170879
   aNMI ISA 30, EISAN fMfl
    ISA 30, EISA ff

This is exactly what was coming out on the console, including case changes.  Note that I had to type this in by hand.  I tried to make sure there were no typos but I am an inperfect being.  ;>

The timeouts and NMI's continued ad nauseatum.  The LBA was always different.

It seems some things may not have gotten displayed properly.  For example, the second error line seems like it should start with "ISA", not "SA".  I fiddled with the monitor settings wondering if something was being chopped off to no effect.  May be the vid chip.  <shrug>

This is repeatable at any time.
>How-To-Repeat:
Any time I try to install 7.0 AMD64 on this system.
>Fix:


>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: