My thanks to all the people who replied to my problem with the 120 GB drive. The fix -- or rather, workaround -- is to disable DMA on IDE by setting hw.ata.ata_dma=0 in /boot/loader.conf .
This means that any I/O on that disk sucks the processor right up into the drive. This is OK, but barely, because I intend to use this drive infrequently but for large amounts of data. I suspect that the problem is in the support for the chipset. The manual for the board isn't very clear about the base IDE chipset; it lists SiS 963 MuTIOL Media I/O IT8705F I/O Control Sil3112A SATA IT8212F RAID The third and fourth IDE channels are controlled via the RAID system; even when it is configured to make the drives directly visible, FreeBSD can't see them. The board is a GigaByte GA-SINXP1394 (P4 Titan Series). Once again, it's running `well enough'; I have now to put the partitions on it; thanks to all who wrote. Mark Terribile __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"