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[shepscrook]

So I've been battling this for a few days trying to get this running.

I've got a FB 500 F2064N, a 4GB Kingston CF card, 44pin to CF adapter, a dell GX620 for the connection with serial.

I'm curious if anyone has any suggestion on getting a keyboard working with this. As well as getting PFSense to work. Right now, it appears as though it's trying to load, however I'm greeted sometimes with some nonsensical PFSense boot dialog (only about 1-3 lines). Then followed by man number signs being displayed.

Do I need to get in to the bios to change any settings? How do I go about getting a keyboard working on this?

I've got a video card which works fine, and 2 PS/2 keyboards (one which I've attempted to get working), however I'm not sure if I am using the right pinout. (I'm guessing com2 or the KBD one).

It's 3:21am and I've had a couple nights of trying many different routes before coming here. If this doesn't make any sense. Please go easy on me as this is my first attempt at a PFSense install.

Added picture of motherboard:
http://www.geekitpc.com/projects/fb700.jpg

[stephenw10]

Hello, welcome to the forum! 
There used to be a great web page detailing this box for installing m0n0wall (from which pfSense was forked so the process is the same) but it has gone off line recently.
Thankfully we have the 'way back machine':
http://web.archive.org/web/20110726001054/http://www.ls-net.com/m0n0wall-watchguard/

Have you read that?

Steve

[shepscrook]

Well, those instructions are for the firebox II.

The problem with that is that the board is completely different.


The furthest I get is:

1 pfS pfSense6 PXE
Boot: 1 ############ (And it continues # from there)

Or it will be different and show this:

1 pfSense
2 6 PXE
Boot: 1

[stephenw10]

Ah, sorry about that some brief Googling lead me to believe they were the same.  

I am embarking on a similar project, installing m0n0 on  a firebox II 700.  ( mod nr F2064N )
I am going to try following this guide, maybe it will help you as well.
http://www.ls-net.com/m0n0wall-watchguard/

It might be struggling with a 4GB card in an old box like that. What image are you using?
What are the specs on the Firebox 1?

Steve

[shepscrook]

It's got the AMDk6-2, and 128MB ram.

I'm using the 2.0.1 Nano 1G

[shepscrook]

I've also added a pic of the motherboard.

[stephenw10]

128MB is now the minimum requirement but should be OK.

From your logs you can see that the bios is correctly loading and running the bootloader.
If you are using a PCI graphics card, which it looks like you are in the picture, then at that point the output will switch to the serial port at 9600 8N1.

Another possibility is that the bootloader is failing to load the kernel for some reason. Have you disabled DMA in the bios? Without a keyboard I guess this may not be possible.

Steve

[shepscrook]

I haven't been able to get into the bios at all.

So I haven't be able to change any settings for that.

[stephenw10]

Are you watching both the VGA output and serial console?

If you can I would try using a smaller and older CF card. A lot of recent CF cards support UDMA and that can cause problems if you can't disable it.

Have you read this: http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting

Steve

[shepscrook]

I'm using the VGA on screen, then I swap back and forth between that and the PC. The serial is connected to the PC and I'm running Putty with a serial connection.

[stephenw10]

Hmm, hard to know what else to suggest.
Are you seeing anything on the serial console?
Is there more than one serial port?

If it's simply not booting from the CF card then about the only thing it try a smaller one.

Steve

[dotdash]

The KB connector is the one that appears to have a Floppy-sized molex power connector on in the picture. I have a PS2 connector salvaged from an old clone on mine. I forget if I switched wires around or if it worked as is.
If you're trying nano, I don't think it's ever going to work. I played with the BIOS and got nowhere. It will boot a full install from a laptop HDD. If you get it working, check out the LED module here: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,36546.15.html