Re: Unable to boot from internal hard disks on new PC -- Solved

Hello,

it's a (very) long time but it was eventually solved
and since last Thursday (16 Feb) I can boot from the hard disks.
Some information for those who remember or are interested:

It was nothing wront with my formatting the hard disks of the
new PC or the installing of FreeBSD.
First I tried (almost) every combination of choices in Bios
but without success.
After several emails to and from the supplier which didn't solve
the problem I sent the PC back.
They made some checks and returned it with an 'everything is OK'.
They've also reformatted all four disks with only one partition of
which 'gpart show' says it's 'ms-basic-data' (whatever that is);
no EFI partition. They've probably not understood my problem.
So again emails and telephone conversations.
They suggested to enable CSM support in Bios; but when I tried
the screen went black and I had to reset Bios and disable CSM.
Then the support told me that since two or three years Intel
tries to force to disable CSM so they disconnect the HDMI output
on the motherboard so I should use a graphics card (I didn't have
one and usually don't need a graphics card). With a graphics card
I could enable CSM without blanking the screen -- but the disks
were still not bootable (they didn't show up in Bios at all).
Besides the internal hard disks there's an option for removable
disks (ICY Dock; at present still empty) so the four SATA connections
on the motherboard aren't enough and there's an additional SATA
controller card. Of course I assumed that the ICY Dock is connected
to the controller card and the disks directly to the motherboard.
But that was not the case! (It was not obvious to see; the cables
for both were strongly twisted in one large bundle.)
After connecting the hard disks directly to the motherboard (and
again searching for the correct Bios configuration) I could boot
from the disks.

Thanks and best regards,
Johannes-Maria