In article <Luqyb.2782$zf2.133449@news20.bellglobal.com>,
Chip Snider wrote:
> decided to go open source. My friends tell me that Slackware is the way to
> go so I want to test it on an older machine of mine.

You've got smart friends. How old is the machine?

> The floppy drive doesn't work, so I have to make it go using the
> instructions on the Slackware site (installation FAQ #11). However, after

Most things at that site are out-of-date, but you hit on a good one
there. The FAQ for this group has much better and up-to-date resources.
AFAICT Pat only maintains the front page, www.slackware.com.

> following these instructions, I get the message "Uncompressing Linux... Ok,
> booting the kernel." and then it hangs...

Errors at this point usually indicate a CPU incompatibility with the
kernel. Is this a 386? Pat dropped 386-compatibility after 8.1. If you
have an especially small hard drive you might want to go back to 4.0. I
did run 8.1 on a 386 for quite some time, however, so it will work. But
some 386-era hardware (I'm thinking of old IDE controllers) might not
work with drivers which have become standard.

> C:\LOADLIN\loadlin bzimage rw root=/dev/ram initrd=color.gz load_ramdisk=1
>
> Not knowing what the root and load_ramdisk switches do makes me think that
> the problem may lie there.

No, that command line looks correct (assuming your kernel and color.gz
are in the current directory.) Oh, maybe part of the problem is with
color.gz; I think the file you need in later releases is called
isolinux/initrd.img. That file itself is too big for a floppy, so you'll
have to figure out a DOS way to split it. (I think pkzip can do it.)

> If I have left anything out, or if this is a common problem and I've simply
> not looked hard enough for an answer, please advise and point me in the

There's another thread about an old machine which started a few days
ago: "swap space" or something like that.

We'll need more detailed information about the hardware and the
Slackware version you're using.
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