Solved…
To answer the last post, the box in which we're having problems is the same box that wrote the configuration to floppy.
The problems was ACPI. This is an older PII and ACPI needs to be disabled in order for the FreeBSD to:
1. See the floppy
2. Do anything with the NICs,
3. Not get "stalled" messages for USB mass-storage.
Once we disabled ACPI, all was well
Thanks for suggestions and help.