Felix Miata [09.11.2016 01:44]:
Werner Flamme composed on 2016-11-08 23:07 (UTC+0100):
I tried to install TW (snapshot 20161102) on one of my old laptops, an IBM Thinkpad R51. It has a Intel PentiumM processor, 32bit, 1 core, and 2 GiB RAM.
735 Dothan 0.09 μm (90 nm) process technology CPU (Introduced May 2004), not a Pentium-4M.
According to http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:R51, it is a Celeron M or a Pentium M in Banias or Dothan architecture. Since I'm not at home, I can't look at the R51 to see the correct model (2887-something). But I am very sure it is not a Celeron CPU.
When booting from the DVD, I can see the EDD check, then the screen becomes black and the laptop reboots. I tried several parameters, last combination was "edd=off nosmp nolapic noacpi nomodeset noefi" - but still rebooting.
Some hints how I can get my old R51 to run Tumbleweed anyone?
BTW, the laptop hasn't been touched for more than 3 years now and has a working installation of openSUSE 12.3 on it :). I just want to update...
Lots of changes between 12.3's 3.7 kernel and TW's 4.8.
Obviously, yes.
https://www.cnet.com/products/thinkpad-r51/specs/ reports your TP as having Intel 855GME chipset and Graphics Processor Intel Extreme Graphics 2. It shares RAM between system and video.
The chipset is some kind of Intel Centrino, there's a sticker in front saying that ;)
I'd try reseating the RAM, running memtest overnight, then if no memtest errors, try again without any special parameters, particularly without nomodeset. Intel video generally doesn't like nomodeset at all. IME it rarely needs it. If no joy, try adding splash=0 and removing quiet cmdline options to see more error messages.
Running without any parameters was my first attempt. And something like "nosplash" or "splash=native" is also a common attempt for me. And since 12.3 runs without problems, I do not think that there is a memory problem, but I started running memcheck before I wrote the mail, and this morning before going to work there were no errors shown. BTW, IIRC my R51 has an ATi graphics adapter, but again, I can't look at it now.
My GX260 Optiplex desktop is around a year older than your laptop, with 0.13 μm process technology Northwood A 2.4GHz 1 core 32 bit P4, 845G video, and 1G RAM shared between system and video. TW 20161105 installation reaches the license screen normally on it without any special startup parameters. Ditto Optiplex GX270 @2.4GHz and 865G video.
On my R51, I do not see much more than the line telling me EDD probing is done after the initial ramdisk is loaded from DVD (selecting "Install" or "Upgrade", then pressing "Enter" shows the "loading kernel" popup, the screen blanks, the EDD line shows, the screen blanks, R51 reboots). My T61 also needs no parameters, and so don't any of my other laptops ;) It was just an attempt, since I guessed that the TW kernel might have SMP active and the box has no SMP, having a single core without multithreading... Werner --