Freebsd – How to install FreeBSD on Thinkpad

Problem seems to be related to ACPI. Since you can not use keyboard while booting, I suggest to build custom kernel without ACPI (or even few with different configs), install system on flash drive and try to boot from it. If one of those kernels will boot correctly - just create partitions, format needed filesystems and dump|restore system from flash drive to hard disk.

I don't have a strong answer for you, but I do have some suggestions.

Non-Geode-specific versions of this problem are all over the web, and it looks like you've already tried some of the common suggestions:

• disabling ACPI
• disabling IDE DMA

I've also seen folks have success with:

• Change disk geometry in fdisk to match what BIOS sees for the boot drive (this might mean having to make a different USB image?)

It might be a good idea to narrow down the problem by eliminating the USB-specific parts of the boot process. Are you able to boot from another device (for example, a Compact Flash card or SATA drive) with a newer FreeBSD already installed?

The fact that the problem is commonly associated with virtualization is also interesting. That doesn't directly apply in your case, but the breadcrumbs of folks investigating it there could be helpful.

You also mentioned in chat that you'd gotten farther with UnetBootin than you'd gotten otherwise; can you elaborate a bit on that - the failure modes that you encounter when trying other methods?

I assume that you've already checked for a newer BIOS, but thought I'd mention it just in case.

If you're really ambitious, you can do a 'binary walk' of updates to source between 7.4 and the next newer OS that worked (8.0? 8.1?) and see where the problem begins. I used this method to track down a problem booting my Whistle InterJets to a change made between 5.2 and 5.2.1.