panic during install: "page fault while in kernel mode"

[Chris Pressey]

Hi all,

I'm trying to install FreeBSD 4.8-RC2 (just because it happens to be the
latest version of FreeBSD that I have a CD for) on a second-hand PC.

The computer's BIOS ("Award Modular BIOS 4.50PG") claims that it is a
"6x86-P166+".  I don't know the make of the motherboard (there are no
obvious identifying marks that I could find on the portion that's
visible with the case open.)

It has a CD-ROM drive but it can't boot from it, so I'm booting from
floppies.  I'm pretty sure the floppies are good - diff'ing them against
the disk images doesn't produce a 'binary files differ' message, and
they boot up on another (more modern) computer just fine.

The problem is this.  I get the following message every time I try to
install from floppies, after I've inserted the mfsroot disk and pressed
Enter (a fraction of a second after the screen shimmers slightly.)  The
message is wholly consistent, never different from time to time:

-------------------------------< snip >----------------------------
Booting [kernel]...
-

Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode
fault virtual address   = 0x4
fault code              = supervisor read, page not present
instruction pointer     = 0x8:0xc01e119e
stack pointer           = 0x10:0xc0843fe4
frame pointer           = 0x10:0xc0843fe4
code segment            = base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b
                        = DPL 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1
processor eflags        = interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0
current process         = Idle
interrupt mask          = net tty bio cam
trap number             = 12
panic: page fault
Uptime: 0s
-------------------------------< snip >----------------------------

Possibly this whole endeavour is a waste of time, but I thought I'd ask
here on the off chance someone knows why this happens and/or how to get
around it.

Thanks in advance,
-Chris