nVidia nForce3 systems have some painful problems with IOAPIC.  I use a
custom kernel with IOAPIC turned off (with it on, I get numerous problems
with device drivers failing in unexciting ways).

GNU/LINUX have similar problems; when I checked their kernel sources in
January, they just disabled IOAPIC on nForce motherboards.  (I was able to
install my system with IOAPIC, but certain hardware devices on the PCI bus
could not be seen.  Shuffling the cards changed the behavior.  There was
even (depending on the PCI card positions) a problem that could kill off
the USB driver for the motherboard USB.

I don't know if this should be taken to mean that nVidia screwed up
IOAPIC, or if they are just picky about the implementation.

Since you're able to pass a bootable kernel, you might try building a custom
distribution with IOAPIC disabled on the INSTALL kernel, and see if that
helps.


As for the motherboard ethernet, last I checked NetBSD did not yet
support it.  I was pointed in the direction of the FreeBSD RealTek
driver for the 8169 chipset (they use the rtk driver for that, I
believe).  It hasn't gotten to the point of my trying to port it,
and someone else has suggested in email that he would do a driver.
I haven't been watching the sources carefully (first I was offline
with my AMD64 for a while, then I was happy to have it back up and
too busy making up for lost time to fret with watching developments).

I guess that it's about time I tried a new kernel.  (^&


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/