Booting from floppy (with syslinux), I see the Syslinux banner, then
Loading linux..
and it hangs "forever" at that point. (FWIW: There are exactly
two
periods in the above output.) Using the same floppy on a different (and much
more recent) machine, "linux" loads and runs without problem.
"linux" is a
bzImage file, by the way.
The failing machine is an old notebook, Epson Action Note 4000, with an
486SLC processor, 8Mb RAM and no co-processor. This is a 2.4.22 Linux kernel,
configured as small as I think is possible. Perhaps the kernel image is still
too big, or maybe the code is linked for a non-existent physical address in
this tiny machine?
Here's the content of syslinux.cfg from the floppy:
------------------------- begin -----------------------
TIMEOUT 50
DEFAULT linux
LABEL linux
KERNEL linux
APPEND root=/dev/ram0 initrd=fs.gz
------------------------- end -------------------------
I'd love to have this machine working with Linux for sitting around
the
coffee house blog-work.
Suggestions sincerely appreciated.
--
Ed Skinner, ed at flat5.net, http://www.flat5.net/
Ed Skinner wrote:> Booting from floppy (with syslinux), I see the Syslinux banner, then > Loading linux.. > and it hangs "forever" at that point. (FWIW: There are exactly two > periods in the above output.) Using the same floppy on a different (and much > more recent) machine, "linux" loads and runs without problem. "linux" is a > bzImage file, by the way. > The failing machine is an old notebook, Epson Action Note 4000, with an > 486SLC processor, 8Mb RAM and no co-processor. This is a 2.4.22 Linux kernel, > configured as small as I think is possible. Perhaps the kernel image is still > too big, or maybe the code is linked for a non-existent physical address in > this tiny machine? > Here's the content of syslinux.cfg from the floppy: > ------------------------- begin ----------------------- > TIMEOUT 50 > DEFAULT linux > LABEL linux > KERNEL linux > APPEND root=/dev/ram0 initrd=fs.gz > ------------------------- end ------------------------- > I'd love to have this machine working with Linux for sitting around the > coffee house blog-work. > Suggestions sincerely appreciated.It probably has a nonstandard A20 gate. This is generally extremely difficult to debug and even harder to find a good solution for. I'm not familiar with the 486SLC and obviously not with the motherboard. -hpa