Ok, this is a good one.

Got a m0n0wall generic PC image on my PC and wrote it to a CF card 
(TwinMOS, 64 MB). I used an adaptor connected to the USB connector on 
the (Asus) motherboard. Had some problems writing to the CF card but 
managed it (tried Manuel's utility off WinXP and also dd off Knoppix and 
one of them worked).

  I am using a new (an previously untested) board (ibase796, Taiwan) 
with the CF card. It boots up but then I get an error:
"hard error reading fsbn 125944 of 0-3 (ad0 bn 125944 cn983 an155n0 
std0:61mb"

and then I get the m0n0 error "cannot find configure.xml".

I take the CF card back to the original PC (where I wrote the image) and 
boot from that (ie boot from the usb adaptor for the CF card). The Card 
works fine. I get the m0n0 console.

I try this several times - even tried with another ibase board in case 
the first one was damaged - but same result.

 From reading the mailing list I know that a lot of people get the 
configure.xml error when booting from  CF card.  Why does the card not 
work on the ibase board when it works on the Asus board?

The freeBSD mailing lists seem to indicate that the 'hard error' means 
some sort of hard disk failure. Does that mean that the ibase bios is 
detecting the CF card wrong? Something to do with geometry?

sai