Linux doesn't like my crappy hardware!

**bidi** · 10-24-2005

At least that's what I think it is. Yesturday, I got these 2 computers (for free) from one of my mom's friend. One booted up just fine, I was even able to install Slackware (with some issues that I still need to take care of). The other had a blown processor, luckly I had a spare one.

The specs on this computer are (general, cause I don't know exactly what it is):
- Currently a 500Mhz Celeron, SGA370 Socket
- 256MB of RAM
- 36x CD drive (have no idea what the brand is)
- And it's a Gateway

The issue that I'm having is that every time I try to boot any Linux (be it through floppy or CD) it hangs and gives me some error messages. The easiest one to remember was the Slackware disk: "Segmentation Error". When booting with DSL it tries to boot from /dev/scd0 and then just gives me a bunch of errors (I can't remember what it says) and then kernel panic. And then, when I tried BlueFlops (a floppy distro) and still can't get to a prompt. The kernel always loads perfectly, at least I see no error messages while it's scrolling by.

I know this sound sort of vague, but it's pretty much what I'm getting. This computer did load Windows 98 with no problem before, so I'm guessing it's something against Linux. Any help would be greatly appreciated

**drakebasher** · 10-24-2005

I'd start with turning off Plug-and-Play in BIOS, and then change the BIOS settings for the hard drives: "auto" seems to usually work. If you have a LiveCD, try setting all of your other drives to "none". Take out any PCI or ISA cards that aren't needed.

**bidi** · 10-24-2005

Still nothing. I did turn off PnP and everything is already auto (but I only have a CD drive installed anyway, no hd). I then tried loading DSL again. I got the folowing error... keep in mind there's more to it, but I just don't feel like copying very thing over to here cause it's pretty long.

Code:

Creating directories and symlinks on ramdisk... Unable to handle kernel pagin request at virtual address 263f389c
 priting eip&#58;
c0151f43
*pde = 00000000
Oops&#58; 0002
CPU&#58; 0
EIP&#58; 0010
EFLAGS&#58; 00010206

Then a bunch of other crap and...

Code:

Process cp &#40;pid 101, stackpage=cf577000&#41;
Stack&#58;  Blah blah blah, a bunch of numbers
Call Trace&#58;  bunch of numbers again

Code&#58; 89 4a 04 89 11 89 43 18 89 40 04 89 f6 80 4b 54 08 b0 01 86

I have no idea what all that crap means, but having it say my CPU is 0 is looks pretty dumb.

**bidi** · 10-24-2005

Oh yeah, and before all that stuff it looked like this:

Code:

Accessing DSL image at /dev/hdc...
Total memory found 256004 kB
Creating /ramdisk &#40;dynamic size=202320k&#41; on shared memory...Done.

EDIT: Damn it, forgot one more thing. I used the "failsafe" boot option.

**bidi** · 10-25-2005

Just in case anyone was wondering, I figured out what the problem was.... RAM. My best guess is that the stick that was in there is messed up. I switched it with some extra memory sticks I had and it now boots up anything I throw at it. The sad part is that the stick that went out is the only 256MB I have.

Thanks for the help though.

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