Thank you for the quick response!

To answer your questions, it's a Pentium-S 100MHz processor with 32mb
RAM and I currently have three small hard drives in it; 400mb, 800mb and
1.2Gb respectively.

It also has an LG/Goldstar 8x CD-ROM and a Linksys NIC (the model of
which I cannot remember off the top of my head, but it is only a year or
two old.

Right now, the machine is running Windows 95, and I have Netscape 4.x
running on it so it can access the internet if I need something that is
not in the Slackware 9.1 CDs.

I'll give the initrd.img angle a shot and let you know if it works or if
I have any other issues.


-chip




/dev/rob0 wrote:
> 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 Most things at that site are out-of-date, but you hit on a good one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.