FreeBSD 5.x-R CDROM Installation Hang

[Nihilist]

Hello,

I've been trying to install FreeBSD 5.1-R from the official 4 CD set.
The problem I'm about to describe occurs with 5.0-R too. Incidentally,
everything is fine with the 4.x-R CDs (no hang, no lsdev problem,
perfect installation).

I insert the first CD and the loader kicks in. It doesn't matter
whether or not ACPI is enabled (which my system supports); I get the
same result either way: the box hangs after the little spinning bar,
which appears after the 5.1 menu (or after the 'boot' command from the
loader prompt), has spun a few times. No error messages, no copyright
+ kernel banner, nothing. This occurs in all boot modes... default, no
acpi, safe, single user.

I've tried playing with BIOS settings. I've tried dropping to the
loader prompt (5.1 menu option 6) and playing with device hints via
the 'show' and 'set' commands, but all the generic settings (irqs,
ports, etc.) seem to be fine.

One thing to note is that issuing 'lsdev' at the loader prompt causes
a reboot, apparently after it tries to gather information about BIOS
Disk 2 (which seems to be the CDROM). This is strange because it has
already reported on the CDROM as cd0.

BTX reports:

cd0 = CDROM
Bios Disk 0 = floppy disk (A)
Bios Disk 1 = hard disk (C)
Bios Disk 2 = CDROM (D)

Notice the overlap for CDROM. The 'lsdev' reboot seems to occur when
it tries to check the CDROM a second time.

The parameters 'currdev' and 'loaddev' have the default value 'cd0:'.
Changing 'currdev' to 'disk2:' and typing 'boot' causes an abrupt
reboot. This seems to further indicate that the problem lies in the
drive assignment somewhere.

I have the hard disk attached to IDE#1 Primary. The ATAPI CDROM is
attached to IDE#2 Slave.

I can't boot from floppies and try to install from the CD because I
get a read error with kern.flp (that was dd'd or fdimage'd).

I've never encountered problems so early in the installation process
before.

Any help in solving this nightmare is appreciated.

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