FYI amd64 (MSI mainboard, MS-7093) - getting acpi working!

[Torfinn Ingolfsen]

Hello,

FYI: 
I have a new machine with a MSI RS480M2-IL (aka MS-7093) mainboard, and
an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (1.8 GHz) processor. It also has an ATI chipset
and integrated graphics ("ATI Radeon XPRESS 200"). I have one stick of
memory in it (512 Mbyte).

I installed FreeBSD 5.4-BETA1 (amd64) on it.
initially, I had to disable acpi in the boot menu, or else the machine
would stop responding after printing the 'acd0: ...' line. It would sit
there forever (or at least more than ten minutes).

The bad thing is that with acpi disabled, there are lots of things that
doesn't work (like the mouse, the usb ports, the firewire ports, etc.).

The bios only have settings for acpi enabled or acpi disabled. acpi
disabled has the same effect as booting without acpi (in the FreeBSD
boot menu).

However, after I read the Handbook chapter on acpi debugging again, I
found a workaround. By writing the line:

  hint.apic.0.disabled="1"

in /boot/loader.conf, the machine now boots with acpi working. At least
so much of acpi that the mouse, usb and firewire ports seem to be
working. I have tested the mouse and it works.
-- 
Regards,
Torfinn Ingolfsen,
Norway