geom_mirror.ko segmentation fault in Fixit mode

[Servangle]

I’m booting from FreeBSD 5.4 RELEASE #0 disc 1, and then entering the 
Fixit live CD environment. I then attempt to load the geom_mirror module 
that comes with the CD like so:
Fixit# /mnt2/sbin/kldload /mnt2/boot/kernel/geom_mirror.ko

which results in a:
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

The debug console shows (w/ additional debugging enabled):
acd0: TIMEOUT – READ_BIG retrying (2 retries left)
ata1: reiniting channel ..
ata1: reset tp1 mask=03 ostat=d0 ostat1=d0
acd0: stat=0x00 err=0x01 lsb=0x14 msb=0xeb
acd1: stat=0x00 err=0x01 lsb=0x14 msb=0xeb
ata1: reset tp2 stat0=00 stat1=00 devices=0xc<ATAPI_SLAVE,ATAPI_MASTER>
ata1: resetting done ..
acd1: pio=0x0c wdma=0x22 udma=0x42 cable=40pin
acd0: pio=0x0c wdma=0x22 udma=0xffffffff cable=40pin
acd0: setting PIO4 on VIA 82C686A chip
acd1: setting PIO4 on VIA 82C686A chip
acd1: device config done ..
vm_fault: pager read error, pid 64 (kldload)
pid 64 (kldload), uid:0 exited on signal 11 (core dumped)

After this all I/O on the live CD fail. For example typing ‘clear’ or 
'df -k' commands result in the following errors, but any other commands 
do the same:
Fixit# clear
clear: Input/output error
Fixit# df -k
df: Input/output error

The CD session seems trashed as if all disk IO from now on is corrupt. 
BTW, this happens with geom_stripe.ko as well.

I can not repeat this issue on my other system (which is newer) so I 
suspect nothing may actually be broken, but perhaps geom is not liking 
my older hardware for some reason. It's funny that this legacy system is 
having problems with geom as it's always ran plain'ol FreeBSD just fine. 
Any ideas?

V/R,
Randolph