PowerBook G3 (Pismo/Firewire) Install CD Hangs

[Mike Cochran]

Hi all, I'm hoping someone can help point me in the right direction.

I'm trying to install FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE on my PowerBook G3 Pismo,
but every time I boot the CD (which matches the MD5 hash, first thing
I checked...) it never finishes booting. The last couple of messages
on screen are below, then the cd stops spinning:

gem0: 10kB RX FIFO, 4kB TX FIFO
gem0: Ethernet address: (mac address...)
sc0 <System console> on nexus0
sc0: Unknown <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>

My thinking at first was possibly DMA trouble with the ATA controller,
because I've noticed some people have had some issues on PowerMacs,
but disabling DMA (set hw.ata.atapi_dma=0) didn't change anything.
I'm at a loss as to what to do, any help would be appreciated. I'm
hoping to breathe some fresh life into this laptop.

Thanks for any help or suggestions you guys might have,
Mike Cochran