FreeBSD 7 load hangs on boot

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:36:05 -0800 (PST), ThinkDifferently <Jeremy at FutureCIS.com> wrote:
> ThinkDifferently wrote:
>> Another item of curiosity...  I just now tried booting from a CentOS
>> 5.2 DVD.  It also hangs with a little window titled "Loading SCSI
>> driver" that says "Loading ahci driver..."  The funny thing is, I've
>> tried turning off all RAID functionality in the BIOS.  On my mobo,
>> this entails setting it to IDE mode, instead of RAID or AHCI.  That
>> doesn't appear to do anything.
>
> I'm at my wit's end with this.  I tried FreeBSD in every way I know
> how, and they all hang.

Did you try the 'safe-mode' option from the loader menu?

Did you try disabling DMA for the CD-ROM by setting hw.ata.atapi_dma=0
from the loader prompt, like someone else suggested a few emails back?