Tried to install 9.1 today on exactly the same (old) hardware but with a 160GB Seagate SATA drive. Decided to use an MBR instead of a GPT - exactly the same result as last year (see above). I'm running Slackware at the moment, but will probably give FreeBSD 8.x another try.
In case anyone else has similar problems here is some info on my particular hardware:
Code:
# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. PT890 Host Bridge
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237/VX700 PCI Bridge
00:05.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB0400 Audigy2 Value
00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:10.0 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.1 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.2 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.3 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.4 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G73 [GeForce 7300 GT] (rev a2)
Motherboard is a Foxconn P4M800P7MB-RS2H - BIOS is already latest version.
The system boots fine when the disk is installed into another machine. I'm almost entirely convinced it's a BIOS bug/problem - and one which will never be resolved.
(p.s. this is not a request for help - just adding info which may be useful)