Uh-oh, FC3 install boot from CDROM error on new machine

[Scot L. Harris]

On Mon, 2005-03-14 at 17:00, Jess Anderson wrote:
> The good news is the hardware did not belch smoke when powered
> on for the first time and I was able to make BIOS settings,
> thus to see that the CDRW/DVDROM drive was recognized as ATA
> ch1 master, the hard disk was recognized as SATA HDD0, and to
> set the boot drive order to CDROM, then HDD0, then floppy. End
> of good news.
> 

Getting the magic smoke back into a box is difficult at best... :)

Glad that did not happen.  :)


> Booting from the FC3 install CD #1, I see loading vmlinuz...
> with quite a few dots, then a goodly wait (30-40 seconds)
> during which the CD drive appears to be reading. But then
> it hangs with the error message
> 
> isolinux disk error 80 AX=4280 drive 9F
> press any key to try again

> 
> Suggestions on where to go from here would be most welcome.


Three possibilities come to mind.

First try to find out which SATA controller chip set you have on board. 
I recently built a system which has two SATA controllers, the Silicon
3114R worked with no problems.  The other one, an Intel controller, did
not see the SATA drives I had connected to it.  I may have fixed that in
the bios by turning off fastscan option but have not retested it.  

If you can find out which SATA controller you have you should be able to
google or find out if Linux supports that chipset.

Second you might try installing using a nodma option.  Have seen many
problems during install where dma caused problems.  You can specify this
as an option during install.

Third, make sure your CDROM is defined as the initial bootable drive for
your system.  But I think you are past that if you are seeing the
vmlinuz statement.


And you might grab a copy of knoppix or one of the other live CD
versions of linux and try booting that.  Those don't need hard drives to
boot to a running linux system.  This will let you know what parts of
your system are compatible.  And if you get it booted you should be able
to try and see the harddrive and format it using the live CD.

 
-- 
Scot L. Harris
webid at cfl.rr.com

"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are
perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust."
-- Lawrence Dalzell