[CDBUG-talk] Freebsd boots to weird (non-working) text console

[Steve Moon]

I picked up an HP Elitebook 8570w, which is a monster of a laptop if you
can get past the fact it's giant and weighs too much. It's got nvidia
graphics, though I'm pretty sure its the kind that uses onboard intel
graphics unless the driver fires up the nvidia chip. 8GB RAM, 500GB SSD.
17" screen "HD+" (1600x900)

While it ran windows and linux just fine, my point was to have a box to
play with BSD on.

I downloaded the latest FreeBSD usb disk image and got it booted just fine.

FreeBSD happily installed. On reboot the console was in some strange
graphical mode that took up the top left quarter of the screen. I hit enter
to boot and the usual scrolling messages started, but in extremely slow
motion. Then the screen went completely corrupt.

I was unable to even ssh into the box.

I've looked for solutions but am coming up empty. Googling is mostly giving
issues around X11 or talking about mode commands that don't seem to work.

I tried putting kern.vty=vt in /boot/loader.conf. This results in a similar
corrupted screen, but I was able to ssh into the box.

I'd like to just get the console looking like it does from the install
media, but don't see how that is set up to work.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!
Steve-
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