Disk boot hangs immediately

[AES2]

An old Pentium 4 HT with 4*512MB DDR1, Intel Pro/100 and IDE on an Intel motherboard with Seagate Barracuda 80GB PATA in white box, ran perfectly until retired in favor of a 64 bit, faster machine.  Plugged in various PCI NICs, all with same failure:

Boot 2.1 Live CD
Select (I)nstall,
Use default options
Get a few acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG ILLEGAL REQUEST asc=0x64 ascq=0x00 - various pages say it's normal BSD info to be ignored
Let it finish installing and reboot
Remove CD

(PC Reboots)
F1  pfSense

F6 PXE
Boot: F1
\

and it hangs on that backslash.

[AES2]

I tried a different PC and got the same result.  Then I read another posting about 2.1 issues:

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,69261.0.html

I downloaded and installed 2.0.3 and it's working perfectly.  As I wrote in that thread I'll be happy to send in any dumps or other diagnostic information requested.

[stephenw10]

2.1 has better support for sata interfaces which is obviously a good thing. However in some systems this has resulted in the drive bring recognised by a different driver and not booting.
Try changing the sata mode in the BIOS.

https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting#BIOS.2FDisk_Errors

Steve