Sony VGN-A49GP FreeBSD 6.0 RELEASE dies during install.

[Shane J Pearson]

Hello,

I have a Sony VGN-A49GP notebook which was running FreeBSD 5.4 RELEASE
nicely, however I have tried to install 6.0 RELEASE without any luck.
It seems from looking at the dmesg that there might be a problem with
the IDE controller attached to the hard disk. It keeps de-attaching the
disk and the installer complains there is no disk.

5.4 reported the disk at ad4 as being UDMA33, yet 6.0 reports SATA150.

OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8 also complain of no disk being found.

I have tried the various options at the boot screen. I have also tried
disabling ACPI and removing modules, to no avail. The best I seem to be
able to do is start an install (from Safe Mode for example), some files
get copied but the disk ends up de-attaching during the copy and
stopping with an error, or otherwise the kernel crashes.

I have tried to capture a dmesg to some media to allow me to post it,
however I can't seem to mount my USB or FW devices to copy it from the
machine. I also do not have a USB-Serial adapter, otherwise I would try
to install from a serial console and capture the dmesg that way.

So, I am very eager to hear any tips to either get my Sony working with
6.0 RELEASE or how to get the dmesg off.

Many thanks in advance,


Shane J Pearson <shanejp netspace net au>                            ->|