Weird issue trying to boot Dell 2450 ...

[dwight at supercomputer.org]

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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Kickstart-list mailing list
> Kickstart-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/kickstart-list