freebsd 6.0 install fails: SATA WRITE_DMA error

[Michael Pujos]

Hi
 
 I wanted to try Freebsd 6.0 on a sony vaio laptop which has a 80Gb HDD drive 
with using this SATA controller:
 
 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller (rev 04)
 
 I have this error when the installer try to write the partition table:
 
 ad4: detected
 unknown: TIMEOUT: WRITE_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=63
 unknown: TIMEOUT: WRITE_DMA retrying (0 retry left) LBA=63
 unknown: FAILURE: WRITE_DMA timed out
 
 I tried booting with set hw.ata.ata_dma=0 but it did nothing
 
 Note that before partitioning the installer complain about incorrect geometry 
and autoguess the CHS values...which are the same that reported by linux 
fdisk.
 
 I remember installing succesfully freebsd 5.1 or .2 a few month ago without 
problem...


(please CC me any answer since i'm not subscribed to the list)