AccelRAID 250 won't boot FreeBSD

[support at solvnet.net]

Hello,
I have an AccelRAID 250 (mylex DAC960PTL) I had 4.9 release 
running a couple of weeks ago but the install must have been a lucky 
alignment of the planets. Currently, on new install I get F1 hang on the 
boot manager or just hangs without.

The problem arose when I did a new install of 5.1 release over the 4.9 
and the install wouldn't boot. I then reinstalled 4.9 and that wouldn't 
boot. I went back and forth a couple times to no avail. I then low level 
fomatted the drives and reinitialized them but again to no avail. I read 
the suggestion to install linux which changes the drive geometry 
(which it did) but still no luck.

I've tried setting the active partition during the install by letting the 
install commit to fdisk and succesfully writing to fdisk manually and on 
all occassions a return to fdisk shows the partition not active. I feel like 
the fdisk is writing to a ramdisk and not commiting it to the boot sector 
on exit as all the rest of the install appears to be on the drive. (on 
reinstall the prompt comes up "commiting to existing root...."). Anyone 
have any knowledge on this? I've additionally tried the live CD and the 
mini cd with the same results.

Are there any bootable floppy sets to bring up a generic kernal that 
doesn't bring up the install routine? Is there a method to correct the 
boot loader manually?

Thanks,
Dan