Install problems on Dell 'Vostro'

[Jerahmy Pocott]

Hello,

I'm having difficulties getting 6.2 installed on these new Dell  
'Vostro' systems.

The BIOS is a Phoenix - AwardBIOS and it reports the version as 1.0.3.

With the SATA controller set to IDE mode (default) in the BIOS  
booting FreeBSD
will hang just before entering sysinstall, booting with ACPI disabled  
stops this
but then no disk drives are found! I got around this by setting the  
SATA mode to
RAID in the BIOS (this seems to make the disk appear as SCSI), then  
it doesn't
crash with ACPI enabled (with ACPI disabled no disks are found still)  
and the
disk is found.

The system only has USB inputs (8 of them) and with the USB  
Controller set
to 'High Speed' in the BIOS, the keyboard stops working once  
sysinstall starts
(though it works in the boot menu), however setting it to 'Full/Low  
Speed' makes
it work in sysinstall. I probably don't care about using High Speed  
USB devices
any way, but it would be nice if they could work, but this isn't the  
major issue.

Now finally I can get into sysinstall and partition the disk, but the  
network interface
is not detected. It says it is an 'Intel 82562V-2' (on board), but I  
see no probes about
it on booting FreeBSD. Is this interface supported? Any ideas on  
getting it detected?

I feel the ACPI might be a problem? On booting it is reported as  
'ACPI: Dell FX 09'

Thanks!
J.