As Gerald wrote in his recent post to this list, he installed Slackware, using disks borrowed from me; so I know that the disks work.

I however, despite trying since Gerald sent them back, get can neither Debian 2.2 r3, or Slackware 8 to install, the problem comes when, with Slackware I reach the point where the install starts, either the CD is not being read, or it is not writing to the hard disk; and with Debian having installed the base system, when I try to install the rest of the system, again my machine will try in vain to find the CD/CD drive. I did try the Slackware experimental kernel for those having difficulty with hardware recognition, this succeeded in wiping my entire linux disk, together with my Mandrake system and its diary/calendar and address books; (why is it that the loss of one's address books causes so much distress?).

Having had problems with installing Mandrake 8 my hardware was re-arranged to make the CD drive the primary slave. I thought at first that this is what had caused the problem. On sunday Chris and I tried again to install Debian and Slackware on his PC, my PC and his laptop. Slackware had the same failure on all three, Debian had the same failure on both PC's but went into his laptop.

We then tried altering the hardware configuration and the BIOS (just about every permutation we could work out, over several hours), again no success. I am only left with the experimental altering of the BIOS to mirror the settings of Chris's Laptop, to try to get Debian into my PC. However that doesn't seem to get me very far with Slackware, any suggestions will be very welcome.

John