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FWIW, RPi 4 is fraught with peril on FreeBSD < 13.0 -- and even if you could have gotten it to boot, you'd find neither ethernet nor USB.

FreeBSD >= 13.0 has an aarch64 RPI image that should boot OOTB for both RPi3/RPi4 -- the medium article referenced predates the introduction of this image, and it should generally make all the firmware steps obsolete. The dts replacement might still be necessary with it, I hadn't really looked at the differences between the one placed in review vs. upstream.

I actually tried a FreeBSD 13 image on the rpi4 and got the same not showing up on the network or replying to pings issue. I think that FreeBSD 13 on rpi4 might just not be ready yet. I wish I had a micro-HDMI cable to diagnose things further.

I think someone reported the latest firmware or something pulling some shenanigans if there's no display connected, whether we use it or not. I don't recall the specifics at the moment, though.

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