by i've got a dell poweredge sp590, on which i'm trying to install
slakware 3.5; however, i can't even get the initial boot from floppy to
succeed. it has an ncr 53c810 raid controller, so i used the n_53c8xx.s
image for my first boot disk; everything seemed to go fine until just
after the 53c810 was detected. the next two lines are:
ncr53c810-0: rev=0x01, base=0x3effff00, io_port=0xfd00, irq=11
ncr53c810-0: ID 7, Fast-10, Parity Checking
and then everything hangs. since the docs in the book i'm using
to guide me through this (volkerding's linux: config & install, 3rd ed.)
doesn't even mention the 8xx image, and says to use to n_53c7xx.s image
for the 8xx series, i tried that as well; that hung after the following:
scsi-ncr53c7,8xx : at PCI bus 0, device 15, function 0
scsi-ncr53c7,8xx : NCR53c810 at memory 0x3effff00, io 0xfd00, irq 11
scsi0 : burst length 8
scsi0 : reset ccf to 3 from 0
scsi0 : NCR code relocated to 0x4600 (virt 0x00004600)
since the machine in question doesn't have a cd-rom, i was planning
on doing a network install, so i also tried the scsinet.s image; that started
the boot process, but suddenly began scrolling this across the screen, so
fast that i couldn't tell what happened just before it started:
aha1542.c: Interrupt received, but no mail.
as a last resort, i finally tried just the scsi.s image, which didn't
even get past the load ramdisk stage before returning the message:
Error 0x10
and dropping me back to the boot prompt.
does anyone have any suggestions on other images to try? also, unless
the scsinet image works, will i be able to do a net install? is there some
way to add the network support from scsinet to whatever image i finally do
get working?
(i'm a sun solaris admin who's trying his first linux install, so i
know almost nothing about the pc end; if your reply is going to involve
anything complicated on the configurations, please try to take it slow.
thanks.)
tia,
sweth.
--
Sweth Chandramouli
IS Coordinator, The George Washington University
<a href="http://astaroth.nit.gwu.edu/~sweth/disc.html">*</a>