If I am reading your note correctly from the errors above, put the HD on IDE0 ribbon cable with cable select should work then try master jumper setting and then put the CDROM an the IDE1 cable, set it from cable select to master as as well.
with HW being on the same ribbon cable back then the manufactures did not agree on IDE implantation so mixing of HD lead to timing issues on the same buss, the DMA (if enabled) the channel IO will wait a really long time for the CDROM to hand back over control is the reason to have CDROM separate from HD on controllers is better for faster system performance. Also you mentioned the CDROM drives are old, record your ISO image at a 4x speed and try! this used to be a issue on very old CDROM drive! This message posted from opensolaris.org
