Weird issue trying to boot Dell 2450 ...

[Klaus Steden]

Hi there,

I've encountered a strange issue trying to bootstrap an old Dell 2450. It
will boot from floppy, it will boot from a Dell provisioning CD, but it
won't boot from a CentOS disc (neither the LiveCD nor a CentOS 4.5 ISO), and
it won't boot its own hard drive.

I'm working around it using a boot floppy (!! how vintage) to bootstrap the
OS into loading, but I'm baffled as to why it won't load itself by any other
means. When Windows 2003 was installed, it booted off the hard drive fine,
so I know it -can- do it ... but I have no clue why it won't load Linux on
its own.

Has anyone ever had an experience like this with a machine, Dell or
otherwise? It's running Fedora Core 6, so it's a fairly current OS, and has
no issues when the OS is actually loaded.

I'm okay with it booting off the floppy but that seems like kind of a ghetto
solution, so I'd rather not have to if I don't have to.

thanks,
Klaus