Trouble installing FreeBSD on a Dell Precision 210?

[Jorn Argelo]

Jason Curole wrote:
> 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
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Try booting with ACPI. ACPI is not only power management; it's also a 
method to talk to hardware. On a Poweredge 1850 I've had problems with 
the second CPU being not detected with an SMP kernel, and it turned out 
that I had to boot with ACPI enabled.

Jorn