[ale] Initial ramdisk load failuse using Loadlin

[Jeff Hubbs]

Byron -

I may something for you.  I just recently had a similar problem and it
appeared to have been due to the infamous buggy PCI EIDE controllers.
There's a pretty good treatise on the problem at
http://mindprod.com/eideflaw.html.  It lists Compaq Presarios (no specific
model information) as having the bad CMD640.  

The basic story is that the CMD640 and RZ-1000 PCI EIDE controllers are
hosed.  I have an AT&T Globalyst 600 from Microseconds ($20 sans RAM and HD)
that has the bad RZ-1000 and I couldn't get the machine to even install
Linux without barfing until I disabled it (HD on an Initio SCSI controller,
CD on the secondary IDE controller).  

- Jeff



> -----Original Message-----
> From: byron at cc.gatech.edu [mailto:byron at cc.gatech.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 12:22 PM
> To: ale at ale.org
> Subject: [ale] Initial ramdisk load failuse using Loadlin
> 
> 
> I've set up a loopback filesystem setup to install Slackware 7.1 on
> my students boxes here at Clark Atlanta. I've always used loadlin
> to boot the kernel and set up a small initial ramdisk to mount and
> configure the loopback file.
> 
> But all of a sudden this week the system has started failing on a 
> couple of machines. Both are Compaqs. One a Presario 7950, the
> other a newfangled laptop. Both are running WinME with the DOS real
> mode boot patch, which seems to work fine on both machines.
> 
> The symptom is that while loadlin (version 1.6a) loads the ramdisk,
> the kernel doesn't seem to pick it up, uncompress it, and run the
> linuxrc in the disk. The kernel message:
> 
> RAMDISK: compressed image found at block 0 ....
> 
> doesn't appear after the IDE drive partitions.
> 
> I've tried different kernels and different boot images. None boot
> on these two machines. The system works fine on other machines in the
> past (including a very similar Compaq laptop running WinME)
> and I plan to spend some time booting some test machines too.
> 
> Lastly the Slack 7.1 boot disk uses syslinux 1.48 with a ramdisk and
> the CD's boot fine on both machines. The only difference is that the
> CD doesn't ever egt to WinME.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> BAJ
> --
> To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" 
> in message body.
> 
--
To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message body.