Booting FreeBSD 4.0 on an IO requires that you hit the <tab> key to switch from the graphic "nothin' but 'net" screen to the BIOS screen before FreeBSD boots, otherwise the console screen will never be displayed. To fix this problem add the following to /usr/src/sys/boot/i386/boot2.c at the top of main():
I recently tried this method on an I-Opener 2001 (I gather it's similar to the v5 I-Openers) and it didn't work. This particular I-Opener has a v5 BIOS from Badflash, so it starts up with a semi-graphical Award boot screen (at least the little blue ribbon is displayed; it must be in some kind of graphic mode to display that). I have not yet changed the BIOS to an older version because if possible I'd like to have sound support on this beast, and an older BIOS would probably not allow that to happen on this machine.
Has anyone else with this BIOS gotten FreeBSD to actually boot and allow you to access it via a console? I suspect it's booting -- the hard drive sounds like it's booting -- but it never gets past the "\" after the "Booting" message appears.
note: the bios fix does slightly more than just changing your display mode. It enables memory interleave, attempts to resolve USB issues, and changes the screenmode to the wrong mode then to the right mode (and in this case displays a banner)
Yep, the new BIOS definitely helped. I've been up and running with FreeBSD on a new I-Opener 2001 for some time now, which was impossible before the new BIOS.
For those uneasy about flashing their Bios:
The new and improved bios from Wild_Pencil (distributed via BadFlash) also contains these features (and more).
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