Dear List,
"Introduce yourself", the subscription notice said - so here goes: I'm relatively new to Linux, having started dabbling about three months ago with an old Slack 3.5 set that was lying around. I became interested in Linux because I'm a dyed-in-the-wool DOS man. We don't allow windoze stuff on the premises here. Because my work is in semiconductors, I need to be able to read .PDF files (data sheets, etc.) and such support as there is for DOS in that format is woefully behind the times - hence Linux! I'm located in east Suffolk as a one-and-a-half-man band control systems design company.
Here's my (first) question: I got on well with the Slack 3.5 that I mentioned earlier but was frustrated that I seemingly couldn't add newer programmes (e.g., acroread) to it. Someone gave me Redhat 7.1 to try and I got on better with adding 'extras', but it seemed so bloated and slow (I'm using a P166, 64Mb RAM & SVGA). Since I liked the feel of Slack 3.5, I decided to get a set of newer Slack CDs and ended up with a 3-CD Slack 7.1 set. I got those, and also a 3-CD Debian 2.2r3 set from an outfit called Crazy Penguin, by following a link from the UK Linux Groups page (where I also found ALUG, incidentally).
My problem is that I can get neither the new Slack or Debian to install. Booting from CD, they both get to a stage early on where the PC locks up solidly with the CD and HDD lights on permanently. I can swithc consoles (Alt-F2 etc.) and one of the consoles sometimes says 'hdc interrupt lost'. I've tried copying the relevant files to a DOS HD partition and installing from there. The process gets a bit further than with booting from CD but it seems that when it needs BIG files from the CD, it hangs up. I tried making some floppies with Slack 7.1 using RAWRITE.EXE under DOS, but RAWRITE caused a QEMM exception. I wondered whether the CDs may be perhaps unreadable, so I tried copying everything from the CD to a DOS HD on my work machine using Xtree and it all copied without any errors.
Thinking that my Linux PC was dying, I moved to yet another machine but that gave me the same results. I went back and tried re-installing the old Slack 3.5 and that went through like clockwork. So I tried re-installing Redhat 7.1 and that installed properly, too, so I'm fairly sure that all my hardware is up to scratch. The old Slack 3.5 RAWRITE.EXE works properly, too. The only common clue to the new Slack 7 and Debian failures is that they both came from this Crazy Penguin outfit and look like they're home-made CDs (titles written untidily by hand across disk top surface).
So my question really is: has anyone else ever had this problem and, if so, was it fixable? Or should I just stump up for a proper boxed set of Slack 7.1 from a reliable vendor? Who is a reliable vendor? Is Debian also available as a boxed set?
Any clues/help would be very greatly appreciated. Sorry that my first message has been so LONG!!
All the best,
Gerald Pye mail@edenyard.co.uk