[CentOS] Issues installing x86_64 5.1 on Ultra 40

Hi all, we're trying to install CentOS 5.1 on a Sun Ultra 40.  This is
an AMD-powered machine and we're using the x86_64 version of CentOS
5.1.  The machine is using the NVidia CK804 chipset and has SATA disks.
It also has 16GB's of memory which prompted us to upgrade the BIOS on
the machine from 1.1 to 1.6 per this (we also have the two quadro
cards):

  http://docs.sun.com/source/819-3954-18/index.html#0_37092

The install goes fine up until the installer is trying to format the
disks.  Part of the way through it simply dies and pops up an error
saying that the installer couldn't format the LVM volume and we have to
reboot.

An examination of dmesg output shows that there are many SATA errors
occuring at this point.  Timeouts and such.

After a reboot, the SATA drive no longer shows up -- not even in BIOS.
It's as if the formatting has instructed the drive to deactivate
itself. :)  A hard reset and reseat of the drive in the SATA enclosure
brings it back again.

First thought was that the slot or SATA port was bad, so we have moved
to others with the same result.

Solaris 10 x86 installs perfectly on this machine, so I'm starting to
think that the sata_nv driver is to blame here.

We're in the process of trying 32-bit CentOS 5.1 on the system just for
giggles, and may try Fedora 8 as well or RHEL 5.1 and use our paid
support to track this issue down, but thought I'd run it by everyone
here.

Didn't see any existing issues in bugzilla.redhat.com or
bugs.centos.org.

Any insights on this?

I will get the exact error messages posted up here soon (output from
dmesg, etc).

TIA,
Ray