Syslinux - Mar 2005 - extlinux "boot failed" on older (pentium 3) motherboards

I have 3 older pentium-3 systems (asus cubx, asus cusl2-c) that give a
"boot failed" message when trying to boot with extlinux on a flash
card
(which uses an ide converter, so it looks like a regular ide hard drive to
the os & bios).  These worked fine when I used syslinux & fat16.

If I take out the flash card & ide converter and put it in a newer p4
system, it boots fine.  So I would assume that I did the extlinux install
& partitioning just fine.  In fact I have been using it for a while now
with no problems in newer systems, and only now am running into a problem
when I am trying to upgrade some older systems.

I was thinking extlinux would boot on any system that syslinux would.  Am
I incorrect?  Any ideas?

Nick wrote:
> I have 3 older pentium-3 systems (asus cubx, asus cusl2-c) that give a
> "boot failed" message when trying to boot with extlinux on a
flash card
> (which uses an ide converter, so it looks like a regular ide hard drive to
> the os & bios).  These worked fine when I used syslinux & fat16.
What's the EXACT message you get?  Also, do you get ANY other output? 
Please describe verbatim; this is very important.  Also, which MBR do 
you use?
> If I take out the flash card & ide converter and put it in a newer p4
> system, it boots fine.  So I would assume that I did the extlinux install
> & partitioning just fine.  In fact I have been using it for a while now
> with no problems in newer systems, and only now am running into a problem
> when I am trying to upgrade some older systems.
> 
> I was thinking extlinux would boot on any system that syslinux would.  Am
> I incorrect?  Any ideas?
It *should*, but it's probably tripping on a BIOS bug that somehow 
syslinux avoids.  This is very odd, because the code is pretty much 
exactly the same.

	-hpa

Actually, I did not use syslinux 3.xx since when I found 3.x I started
using extlinux.  The version of syslinux is 2.11.
> Nick wrote:
>> I get this exact message (case preserved):
>>
>> Boot failed
>>
>> And nothing more.  It appears right after the second bios screen (the
>> one
>> that gives the disk/com port/pci info, etc).  It is in the same place
>> where I should see the "extlinux" line when the booting
starts.
>>
>> I am using the mbr that comes with syslinux (3.07 BTW).
>>
>> Just for the hell of it, I did a fdisk /mbr.  I ended up with the same
>> error message.
>>
>
> You say this works with syslinux 3.xx using a FAT filesystem?
>
> 	-hpa
>

Nick wrote:
> Actually, I did not use syslinux 3.xx since when I found 3.x I started
> using extlinux.  The version of syslinux is 2.11.
> 
Could you try it, please?

	-hpa