SuSE gives choices for: 2.2 or 2.4 for 386, 2.2 or 2.4 for Pentium, vanilla 2.4 (no SuSE patches), and 2.2 or 2.4 SMP. The installation kernel behaves fine, it just dies on reboot. I think I have found the problem. The disk drive has more than 1024 cylinders. The BIOS translates that to a smaller number of cylinders with more heads, but Linux bypasses the BIOS, so bad geometry. A key fact that I just discovered is important is that this box used to be dual boot Windows 95 and Linux. EZ-Drive was installed to handle the larger disk (it's a software extended BIOS). Then I got a dedicated Linux box and made the first box dedicated Windows. Now it is to be a dedicated Linux box and I wiped EZ-Drive. That's the key. I found a Web site that explained this in terms that match my experience. Now to keep reading and fix it. Jeffrey Quoting Allen <aef@prismnet.com>:
I don't know about Suse, however, many distro's are COMPILED FOR PENTIUM.
Redhat, last I checked, had base at 386.
Could be your Linux is all compiled for Pentium and that's the real problem.
Jeffrey Taylor wrote:
95 and Linux. EZ-Drive was installed to handle the larger disk (it's a software extended BIOS). Then I got a dedicated Linux box and made the first box dedicated Windows. Now it is to be a dedicated Linux box and I wiped EZ-Drive. That's the key. I found a Web site that explained this in terms that match my experience. Now to keep reading and fix it.
Jeffrey
IMHO, you have just shot yourself in the foot. ;-) EZ Drive is/was needed because of the computer's BIOS, it obviously could not recognize the large HD. That means that since you wiped it off, you are probably left with whatever size the BIOS can see. Linux should have been able to have been installed with the Bios extension just fine. YMMV. -- Joe & Sesil Morris New Tribes Mission Email Address: Joe_Morris@ntm.org Web Address: www.mydestiny.net/~joe_morris Registered Linux user 231871
Jeffrey Taylor wrote:
95 and Linux. EZ-Drive was installed to handle the larger disk (it's a software extended BIOS).
On Fri, 2002-02-01 at 22:28, Joe & Sesil Morris (NTM) replied:
IMHO, you have just shot yourself in the foot. ;-) EZ Drive is/was needed because of the computer's BIOS, it obviously could not recognize the large HD.
Boy, this brings back memories :-) I forget exactly what disk-management software I had, but it came bundled with a Quantum 13.6GB harddrive. LILO wan't happy; the only way I could boot Linux was with a floppy :-( I toughed it out for a year... Then, I bought a Promise Ultra100 IDE controller. This removed the need for the disk-management software, and SuSE7.0 installed nicely. IIRC, the only "trick" with more-modern SuSE distributions is that I have to pass the kernel parameter "ide2=noautotune". So, for the modest cost of the Promise controller, I saved an older computer from the dump, and took full advantage of the "final upgrade" Quantum 7200rpm drive I bought a year earlier. -Gord (what to do with 8 IDE connections :-) ) -- Gordon Pritchard, P.Eng., Member IEEE Technical University of B.C. - Research Lab Engineer mailto:gordon.pritchard@techbc.ca direct phone: 604-586-6186
participants (3)
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Gordon Pritchard -
Jeffrey Taylor -
Joe & Sesil Morris (NTM)