Plextor DVDRW not recognized during install

[Alastair G. Hogge]

On Wednesday 13 December 2006 14:12, Josh Abbe wrote:
> Hey everyone,
Hey,

> First of all, I hope I am doing this (sending a mass email) correctly.  I
> didn't see any instructions or guidelines, so here goes:
>
> I am trying to install FreeBSD 6.1 (Amd64).  I am a complete newbie, but I
> thought I would be able to do it following the FreeBSD Hand Book.  Well,
> everything looked like it was going fine.  I chose a language/country, set
> the auto configuration for the HDD partitions, and eventually got to the
> screen that asked me to choose which media to install from.  I chose
> CD/DVD.  Then, it gave me an error saying that the system could not detect
> my CD drive.  Weird...since it seemed to know the drive was there to get me
> to that point.
>
> Right now, installing over FTP is not an option.  I posted my problem in a
> FreeBSD forum, but no one seemed to have any solutions other than to send
> an email to the DL (as I am doing now).
>
> The drive I am trying to install off of is the (SATA) Plextor DVDRW (PX -
> 716A/SW)
I had the same problem sometime ago. After I installed via FTP and updated the 
source for a few months my DVDR <PLEXTOR DVDR PX-716A/1.07 was suddenly being 
probed and loaded OK, but up until a few months ago FreeBSD no longer sees it 
on boot anymore.

At first the only way I could my DVD driver to load was to unplug the SATA 
cable and plug it back in and FreeBSD would see it then. Searching the PR 
database I found a better solution from someone who had the same problem. I 
use atacontrol detach ata3(where my drive is) wait a few seconds and then 
atacontrol attach ata3 and then my driver is now loaded.