I have an old PC which is proving remarkably stubborn. It boots with Knoppix but any distro that actually requires access to the HD either hangs at some point in the installation process (Mandrake) or produces an installation that won't boot (Slackware). I've tried Slackware 10, Mandrake 10.0 and Mandrake 8.2.
Win 98, incidently went on perfectly and has been no more troublesome than usual. There were no problems partitioning the disk or setting up LILO BTW.
A friend spent a Sunday afternoon alternately playing with it and swearing at it. He has concluded that there is a very fundimnental problem with the IDE controller. The machine is an AMD K6, with a Gigabyte GA 5AA mb which has an ALI M5229 IDE controller.
Can anybody offer any insights inbto what's going on and how it may be cured?