problems installing 6.2 on Dell Dimension 4100

[Modulok]

On 6/6/07, S Parrish <wsparrish at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I am new to FreeBSD and am trying to install 6.2 on a Dell Dimension 4100.
>
> After I get to the "Welcome to FreeBSD!" screen and press enter, I see the
> following:
>
> /boot/kernel/acpi.ko text=0x43698 data=0x23c0+0x10f0
> syms=[0x4+0x7ba0+0x4+0xa828]
> \
>
> The second line is the position of the "twirling baton" when the system
> hangs....
>
> 1GHz Pentium III processor
> 512 MB RAM
> 2) 80GB Western Digital IDE hard drives
> 3.5 inch floppy drive
> Sony IDE DVD-ROM drive
> (not sure of brand, came with the Dell) IDE CD-RW drive
> Nvidia Ge-Force III video adapter with 128 MB ram (AGP)
> D-Link 10/100 Ethernet card (PCI)
> D-Link WiFi card (PCI)
> Creative Soundblaster Live sound card (PCI)
> 3-port Firewire card
> USB 1.1 built into MB
> PS/2 keyboard
> USB mouse
>
> I have tried disabling everything possible in the BIOS as well as removing
> every card, with the exception of the video card.  I still get the same
> results.  I've tried every possible combination of primary/slave for both
> hard drives and CD/DVD drives.  Still no luck.
>
> I have tried disabling ACPI to no avail.
>
> I have also tried FreeBSD 5.5 and PC-BSD 1.3.01 and get the same
> results....system hangs.  Note that I have been able to successfully install
> a number of Linux distros (including Mandrake, Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu, and
> Debian) on this box previously with no problems.
> Note that I *can* get to the "loader prompt" by selecting option 6 in the
> welcome screen menu.  However, every other option in the menu results in a
> system hang.
>
> Has anyone ever run across anything like this?  I've been working on this
> for 3 days and am at wit's end.  Any help is greatly appreciated!
>
> Thanks,
>

On the up side, yes. I have a toshiba laptop (I forget the model
number, and it's not with me at the moment) and it does the same
thing. The only thing I didn't try, is to attempt an install with a
stripped custom kernel.

On the down side, I haven't gotten back to that project (among
others), so I have yet to get it to work. In the mean time I installed
Debian Sarge (though I still use FreeBSD on my main workstation). So,
umm....you're not alone...if that helps?

Sorry. Maybe someone else has some sage-like advice?
-Modulok-