Solaris 8 10/01 installation aborts

Question

Hello!
I'm sorry if this question is asked once again, but I was not able to
find a solution for this problem after searching forums, web and google news.
I'm trying to install Solaris 8 10/01 on this machine:
AMD Thunderbird 1200
396Mb RAM
ABIT KT7A, bios level 4A
IDE0
-IBM (~9GB) - master
-HITACHI (~120GB) - slave
IDE1
-CDRW TEAC CD-W58E
Matrox G200
Realtek 8029 (NE2000 compatible) eth card.
The CDs are correctly written (on the same CDRW drive reading them),
there is no problem reading back the data.
I've tried to install booting from CD1 or the DCA diskette.
It shows a ACPI-nonACPI device conflict (seems from other posts that
it's ignorable).
I have three choices for booting:
DISK TARGET 0 (the IBM) OnBoard PCI bus 0 dev 7 func 1
DISK TARGET 1 (the Hitachi) OnBoard PCI bus 0 dev 7 func 1
CD TARGET 0 (the TEAC) OnBoard PCI bus 0 dev 7 func 1
All three have "bus 0 dev 7 func 1". The IBM disk drive and the CD have the same
target ( 0 ).
It silenly reboots soon after choosing any of the two options
(Interactive or JumpStart).
After digging a little on google/news, I found out the "b kabd -v"
option that allows me have some output.
It seem to recognize correctly the CD drive, but it panics after that.
Some info from the last visible screen (with the degugger):
ata_init_drive_pciide = dma_disabled
ATAPI device at targ 0, lun 1 , lastlun 0x0
model CD-W58E ...various CD drive details (seems correctly identified)...
PCI device ide@1, ata1
ata1 is /pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ide@1
sd0 at ata1 : target 0, lun 0
sd0 is /pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ide@1/sd@0,0:a fstype ufs
panic[cpu0]/thread=fec17540 : vfs_mountroot : cannot mount root
fec12bdc genunix : vfs_mountroot + 5c (fec0974c fec0103c)
fec12bec genunix main+78()
stopped at int20 + 0xb : ret
I've tried various combinations of:
-UDMA enabled/disabled (BIOS)
-1 or both HDDs installed in different combinations with the
-CDROM drive (the jumpers changed accordingly)
-safe defaults for BIOS setup
-slowed down clock (900MHz). "Native"=1.2GHz, never overclocked
-enabled-dma boot param (can't remember exact name) 0 or 1
-acpi-user-options = 0x2 (targeting the ACPI problem, not sure if of
any use)
-all unused HW out (TV Tuner, soundcard, )
Same result.
I have no problems running Slackware and OS/2 on the same hardware.
I had no problems running in the past Win2000 on this machine.
Any idea/solution?
I can post more details concerning the hardware if that's of any use.
Thank you!
Regards,
Radu

Answer 1

Try to find a good old cdrom device (or maybe a dvdrom) and use that as the boot device instead of
the cdrw drive. Don't know what the problem is with solaris x86 and (certain) cdrw drives, but
apparently there is some problem with them because you're not the first user with this problem.