[commodorejohn]

I think I'll probably just stick with 9 for now, but as long as we're on the subject: I don't think verbose/text mode will help and I don't imagine it has anything to do with card initialization. It simply doesn't get any farther than the little text spinner it displays while loading the kernel, which plods along at one tick every couple of seconds for minutes on end, briefly spins at a normal rate, then goes back to plodding along, and will do this for hours on end if I let it. As far as media issues go, I burned two copies which both display the same problem, on the same media I used for the 9 DVD which booted without issue.

Like I said, I know I got it to boot once, because I had Solaris 10 installed and running, but I can't for the life of me remember what black magic was required to get it to do so.