Need help installing on SATA

[Conrad J. Sabatier]

Does anyone know the magic incantation that will permit me to install 
FreeBSD on this new machine of mine (nVidia chipset, SATA1 disk 
controller)?

I've been trying for a week or so now, with no luck.  Just out of 
curiosity, I downloaded and ran Ubuntu 8.x, and it recognized all of 
my hardware automatically.  The FreeBSD installer (both in 7.x and 
8.x), though, can't find my hard drive or CD-ROM.

I *really* don't want to have to resort to Linux, not after using 
FreeBSD for 12 years now, but if I can't find a solution to this 
problem, I'll have no choice.  :-(

Thanks for any advice.