CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x

[Tim Daneliuk]

I am building a new server out of both older and brand new
components.  It is based on a Pentium D 925 and ABIT LG-95Z
mobo.  The DVD-RW is a Lite-On about a year old with very
low hours on it.

So ... here's a fun one:  I can boot and install FreeBSD 4.x (CD)
or Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop 10 SP1 (DVD) via the
DVD.  But attempting to do this with 6.x (I have tried 6.2R and
6.3-PRE disk #1) causes a hang during boot.  The loader gets
as far as showing the vertical bar that ordinarily "spins"
to show intitial kernel loading progress and the the machine
just sits there.  There is some further activity on the optical
drive at this point and then the cursor sort of jumps around a bit.

I've not yet tried swapping the optical drive out - though I doubt
this is the problem since I can load the other OSs.  I've tried
removing and moving memory sticks in case this is a flakey
memory problem - no change.  I've tried removing the only
two cards in the machine: 3COM 905C-TX and an Adaptec 2940UW -
no change.

I have one last ditch thing I will try later tonight which is
to force the DVD IDE port into PIO mode and out of DMA mode.
But that's it.  I am stumped.  Ideas anyone?

TIA,
-- 
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Tim Daneliuk     tundra at tundraware.com
PGP Key:         http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/