Syslinux - Jan 2007 - syslinux-2.11 boot, syslinux-3.20 fail

We used syslinux package on IPCop with success to install from floppy, from
cdrom, from usb key and pxe.

I upgrade the distribution nine month ago from 2.11 to more recent versions
(3.11, later 3.20).
We add one consistent report of a laptop machine that boot with 2.11 but
fail with 3.11 and 3.20

Symptom is that the machine don't display anything after loading the kernel
and initrd.
with 3.11 or 3.20, it gets as far
as:
  Boot:
  Loading vmlinuz.............
  Loading instroot.gz.........
then stops.


Machine is a Compaq armada 1500 series (P90 48MB RAM pcmcia NIC, no usb, no
cdrom)
RAM is error free: no errors after 5 hours of memtest86

the most interresting part of the thread is at
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=ipcop-user&m=117019822812411&w=2

syslinux.cfg mostly is
DEFAULT vmlinuz
APPEND ide=nodma initrd=instroot.gz root=/dev/ram0 rw

As a notice, I have two other different machines that are very slow to start
with syslinux (typically more than 5s between each . during kernel load and
initrd).
Both are with K6-2 cpu and a VIA chipset, one is a laptop, one is a desktop.
I don't know what to investigate with them

Gilles Espinasse

Gilles Espinasse wrote:
> 
> As a notice, I have two other different machines that are very slow to
start
> with syslinux (typically more than 5s between each . during kernel load and
> initrd).
> Both are with K6-2 cpu and a VIA chipset, one is a laptop, one is a
desktop.
> I don't know what to investigate with them
> 
The most likely explanation for this is very strange A20 gate behaviour.

	-hpa

Gilles Espinasse wrote:
> We used syslinux package on IPCop with success to install from floppy, from
> cdrom, from usb key and pxe.
> 
> I upgrade the distribution nine month ago from 2.11 to more recent versions
> (3.11, later 3.20).
> We add one consistent report of a laptop machine that boot with 2.11 but
> fail with 3.11 and 3.20
> 
> Symptom is that the machine don't display anything after loading the
kernel
> and initrd.
> with 3.11 or 3.20, it gets as far
> as:
>   Boot:
>   Loading vmlinuz.............
>   Loading instroot.gz.........
> then stops.
> 
Could you try the current release, 3.35?

	-hpa