4.x Installation failure - White Stripes on initial boot.

[Ron McCy]

  Computer: SpaceWalker-Pentium III.800mHz, 256MB, 20GB
  hd running FreeBSD 4.8 as the only operating system.
  Goal: Non graphical work stattion - possible Samba
  server.

After an minimal installation the system "freezes"
shortly after passing the boot manager and the monitor
shows several long, white vertical stripes that
resemble bar codes. The system is unresponsive and has
to be forced to cold boot.  I was trying to install 4.8
or 4.9 but multiple reloads all produce the same
result.  Before it was a Win2000 box I had FreeBSD 4.4
on it briefly but I don't have those disks anymore.
It's as if BSD has some major problem with the
hardware, but everything 'installs' without complaint.
SuSe Linux was just loaded and it seems to be happy. I
do have output from its dmesg in hopes that there is
some detailed info about the hardware there.

Any ideas about where to start?

Thanks.