The message XFMail.051012230513.Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk from (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk contains these words:
Tony, that looks like serious hardware problems to me. Difficult to suggest where to start -- was going to suggest putting a different drive in as HD0 and seeing where you got to, but you've tried playing with that sort of thing it seems.
Yes - Win98SE works OK, though there are obviously 'issues'.
One thing that you may find very useful in diagnosis, however, is "Linux on a Floppy", aka "tomsrtbt". Find it at
donwload the tarball, and follow the instructions in the FAQ. You end up with a single floppy which will plant a very capable mini-Linux in RAM, from which you can explore your system (including playing with the hard drives using fdisk, though I'd leave actially altering anything on the drives until you are pretty clear as to what's going on).
Thanks - sounds useful, but
Note that you'll need a floppy drive capable of formatting the floppy as 1.722MB (/dev/fd0u1722); recent floppy drives should handle this fine.
I haven't got such an animal. However, could I boot from an ordinary one and run tomsrtbt from a memory st.... er - USB port won't be working innit...
The just boot off the floppy, and follow the on-screen instructions. It's all very simple. Since it resides entirley in RAM, you don't need to touch the hard drive if you only want to look at it.
This Linux also includes a good variety of drivers for hardware, as well as an impressive array of system tools.
Hum - I bet it can't compress the (AGP) ATI Rage 128 Pro drivers quite *THAT* much... (Ys, I know they won't e needed - VGA will suffice)
If you can't get it properly booted off the floppy, then you have a problem with the floppy/RAM/motherboard/video; maybe conflict with other devices (you've got an interesting bunch of kit in there).
I was connecting things one at a time, and all seemed hunky-dory until I fed Win 2000 Pro the SP4 CD. I have a5Œ" floppy drive and two SCSI II HDs in there too, but not connected or powered-up yet.
I'm going to gut the box and give it the minimalist treatment, and on advice from Zetnet's development guru, run it for a few days with each added component. He's also sending me some (Windows 2000 diagnostic stuff on a CD.)
But Knoppix falling over is *NOT* a good sign.
Thanks for the input. (I'll have to make a sig of that.)
Highly recommended as a last resort -- I now always have one by me, including in a pocket of my laptop, just in case!
Good luck,