[plug] Strange stuff with antique hardware

[Gary Allpike]

On Wed, 19 Aug 1998 13:23:32 +800, you wrote:

>Does anyone have any thoughts on the following:
>
>a) Debian floppy taking 3 mintues to load a kernel

This is a known problem with older floppy disk controllers :

Quoting ftp.linux.org.au/pub/debian/hamm/hamm/disks-i386/current/

-----
The -fast disk images use syslinux normal mode.

You should use those images if the usual ones boot too slowly in your
machine.
-------


>b) LILO fails at "LI", even with "linear" option

Do you have the root partition completely within the first 528MB of the
hard disk drive ??

Sounds like a non-LBA BIOS with a >528MB gard disk drive installed



>
>This is for the old 33DX486 I mention earlier. I am about to try another 
>mainboard and a different IO card (to solve the floppy problem).
>
>I configured the HDD on a P166, transplanted the drive and kept the same 
>HDD settings. I can boot into Linux with the "rescue" floppy and poke around 
>but with such a slow boot time it is a pain.
>
>According to the docs the "LI" failure is either bad disk geometry or moving 
>the boot.b file. I know that I haven't touched boot.b so there is something 
>strange going on here.
>
>David Campbell
>
>
>=======================================================
>campbell at torque.net
>
>"There is no such thing as a bug in the Linux 2.1.x kernels
>Consider it as a request from the enlightened for you to brush
>up on your C programming and help improve the kernel."


regards


Gary 
-- 
Gary Allpike - spice at q-net.net.au
System Administrator
Q-Net Australia    http://www.q-net.net.au
Ph: +61-8-9386 1178   Fax: +61-8-9386 8200