Very Computer

I'm trying to install Slackware 1.2.0 on a PS/1. I'm running into several problems. Any help
will be tremendously appreciated.

1. When installing from the scsinet boot disk, I have a intermittent problem in which
    a password is asked for, when I first try to login as root. After a couple (sometimes 10)
    of "60 second timeouts" the problem seems to go away and is promptly replaced by a
    "out of memory" message. (I have 4M of memory). Things are fine after that.

    I have 2 hard disks and Linux is located on the SECOND (slave) drive. When I create a  
    boot diskette/ LILO diskette and try to reboot Linux off these, there is a "kernel panic"
    message and the system hangs. It seems that the hard drives are not recognized. I
    believe that the PS/1 does not store drive geometry in the CMOS and hence the problem.
    Does anybody out there know a way to create a boot/LILO diskette that gets around
    this problem ?

2. As any brave first time installer would :-(, and because of Probem 1 above, I chose
   the option to install LILO on the hard drive (trashed MBR on the first
    [DOS] drive I presume ??) and tried to "vi" the  appropriate LILO config files and disktab.
           Murphy's law took effect ...... vi did not work
   and hung my console and forced me to reboot. The result is that every time I boot, LILO
   starts up, does not recognize the drives and ends with the "kernel panic" message.
   Since the MBR on the first drive is changed, I tried to hold down the Shift, Control, Caps
   Scroll lock keys together, separately and other permutations thereof. No luck! Same
   result......LILO does not pause to let the disk(s) geometry to be defined manually.

   Any help, including how to get Linux working again, get DOS back, sample LILO
   config/disktab files, general help in what is a recommended way to go when installing
   Linux on an entirely separate hard drive (/dev/hdb), creating bootdisks etc. will be
   tremendously appreciated. BTW, I have read the LILO readme and the TeX document
   but would like some first hand help. Many thanks !

Regards
Bala Rajaraman

<<<<<<      Stuff Deleted    >>>>>>>>>>>>

Hi,

        With regard to the previous post ...... some things look better i.e. the LILO MBR
(when installed through "setup") uses a lilo.config which reads from /dev/fd0, and that
seems to work. However, /dev/hda (all DOS) and /dev/hdb (almost all Linux) are still not
recognized (A PS/1 with IDE drives !!).
Since the default installation of LILO to the MBR does not pass any disk geometry info
to the kernel, I modified the /mnt/etc/lilo.config file to "append="hd..." to pass the drive
geometry to the kernel and tried to run /mnt/sbin/lilo to rebuild the MBR (actually did a
lilo -v -v -v -t). This fails with something like ...
          Creating .... device /tmp/dev.0 (0x0101)
          Don't know how to handle  0x0101
          Deleting ...... /tmp/dev.0
From the LILO manual, I can't figure out what 0x0101 is ? I tried modifying /mnt/etc/disktab,
with no success. Pleeese Heeeelp !!

Also, can anyone tell me what DPARAM.COM is ? It is referenced in the LILO installation but
is not available on my MS-DOS6.0.

I  have a point where I don't know how to handle "Don't know how to handle 0x0101". Any
help would be very much appreciated.

Regards
Bala