Weird issue trying to boot Dell 2450 ...

[Klaus Steden]

Hmmm, I wonder ... it might be easier just to swap out the drive for a
different (newer) one, if I can find one lying around.

However ... I'm still a little baffled as to why it won't boot the hard
drive directly, either.

Klaus

On 2/4/08 11:00 AM, "Matt Fahrner" <Matt.Fahrner at coat.com>did etch on stone
tablets:

> There might be a firmware image that you can use to upgrade the CD
> drive. I've been able to get CD readers to recognize additional media by
> getting the latest firmware in (or in some cases, hacked firmwares)...
> 
> - Matt
> 
> Klaus Steden wrote:
>> 
>> Yeah, the CD is fine (I can read it elsewhere), so I think you¹re right
>> about it not being able to read CD-RWs. I wouldn¹t be surprised, this
>> machine is quite old (Pentium 3!!)
>> 
>> cheers,
>> Klaus
>> 
>> On 2/1/08 11:31 PM, "dwight at supercomputer.org"
>> <dwight at supercomputer.org>did etch on stone tablets:
>> 
>>     Many older systems have CD-ROM drives that only support CD-R format.
>>     They won't recognize a CD-RW disk. That would be the first thing
>>     that I'd check. I used to have a system like that.
>> 
>>     The key question here is whether Fedora ir CentOS will even read the
>>     CD that you have. If it is indeed a media incompatibility, then no
>>     OS will be able to read it. If the CD can indeed be read, then I'd
>>     suspect a BIOS issue.
>> 
>>        -dwight-
>> 
>>     On Thursday 31 January 2008 11:23:27 am Klaus Steden wrote:
>>>  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
>>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 
>>