Ok I've now replicated this. The issue is a BIOS setting. The critical setting is that ACPI must be enabled in the Power Management Setup menu. It isn't if you've loaded the default values. If you've upgraded from an earlier bios without clearing the CMOS then it might be, hence the confusion. Nothing else seems to prevent it booting though you probably also want to enable DMA/UDMA in the Integrated Peripherals, On-board IDE menu.
Edit: The actual cause of this appears to be a regression in the gpioapu driver. https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/4363. By enabling ACPI you are providing a value of some sort for smbios.system.product (even if that value is 0) and working around it.
So you must set this:
Phoenix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
Power Management Setup
+=====================================================+========================+
| ACPI Function [Enabled] | Item Help |
| Power Management [Disabled] |------------------------|
| Video Off Method [Blank Screen] | Menu Level * |
| Video Off In Suspend [No] | |
| Suspend Type [Stop Grant] | |
| MODEM Use IRQ [3] | |
| Suspend Mode Disabled | |
| HDD Power Down Disabled | |
| Soft-Off by PWR-BTTN [Instant-Off] | |
| CPU THRM-Throttling [75.0%] | |
| Wake-Up by PCI card [Disabled] | |
| | |
| ** Reload Global Timer Events ** | |
| Primary IDE 0 [Disabled] | |
| Primary IDE 1 [Disabled] | |
| Secondary IDE 0 [Disabled] | |
| Secondary IDE 1 [Disabled] | |
| FDD,COM,LPT Port [Disabled] | |
| PCI PIRQ[A-D]# [Disabled] | |
+=====================================================+========================+
^V><:Move Enter:Select +/-/PU/PD:Value F10:Save ESC:Exit F1:General Help
F5: Previous Values F6: Fail-Safe Defaults F7: Optimized Defaults
You probably want this:
Edit: Although some basic testing showed almost no improvement in drive speed. :-\
Phoenix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
OnChip IDE Device
+=====================================================+========================+
| IDE HDD Block Mode [Enabled] | Item Help |
| IDE DMA transfer access [Enabled] |------------------------|
| On-Chip Primary PCI IDE [Enabled] | Menu Level ** |
| IDE Primary Master PIO [Auto] | |
| IDE Primary Slave PIO [Auto] | |
| IDE Primary Master UDMA [Auto] | |
| IDE Primary Slave UDMA [Auto] | |
| | |
| *** On-Chip Serial ATA Setting *** | |
| On-Chip Serial ATA [Disabled] | |
| x PATA IDE Mode Secondary | |
| SATA Port P0,P2 is Primary | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
+=====================================================+========================+
^V><:Move Enter:Select +/-/PU/PD:Value F10:Save ESC:Exit F1:General Help
F5: Previous Values F6: Fail-Safe Defaults F7: Optimized Defaults
Steve