Trouble installing FreeBSD on a Dell Precision 210?

[Jason Curole]

Hello all,

I am a newbie to FreeBSD, though I currently use Mac OS X and am  
reasonably comfortable with the unix side.  I am trying to install  
FreeBSD on a Dell Precision 210 machine (scrounged it up recently and  
it has a huge hard drive, otherwise I don't know much about it).  I  
have tried installation with FreeBSD Release 6.0 and 6.1 (both the  
full cd and boot-only cd for 6.0; just the boot-only cd for 6.1).   
The machine boots and I get to the screen where I can select my boot  
option.  I select 5, (boot with detailed messaging) and the machine  
goes through some SMAP messages, a couple of Copyrights and a Free- 
BSD claimer with an email address.  It pauses here for a good  
10-15min.  Then I get messages regarding preloading of "elf kernel",  
"mfs_root" and "elf module", followed by tables 'FACP' and 'APIC',  
"MADT: Found table at ...", "APIC: Using the MADT enumerator", then:

MADT: Found CPU APIC ID 0 ACPI ID 1: enabled
MADT: Found CPU APIC ID 1 ACPI ID 2: disabled

It has remained at this point for at least a half-hour (through  
lunch, etc.), no lights flashing and does not respond to the enter  
key.  Is this normal?  I should mention that between the attempt at  
installing 6.0 (about 4 weeks ago) and 6.1 I had installed OpenBSD  
and it appeared to install and work fine, so I think the machine is  
okay.

Jason