Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

> The continuing saga of the DFI ITBD rev B 1997 motherboard that won't load 
> zimage (IO problem reading INITRD, try again 'not a kernel image' when you 
> try to boot linux) unless the hard drive is using Win98 DOS, or you boot 
> from a 2-floppy BL2 set formatted wtih Win98 DOS, or load zimage from the 
> latter but boot from the hard drive.
> 

The second ITBD that was booting linux (but not doing plip) then not 
booting linux then booting linux is again not booting linux.  I booted 
linux using zimage from Win98 boot floppy and loadlin from DR-DOS hard 
drive and was able to ping the other computer once, out of about 20-30 
tries.  Then the hard drive lost all its directories but had 150M fre 
space out of 250M partition, and scandisk restored the directories but 
renamed them DIR00001 through DIR00033.  We reformatted and recopied.

Again, I think not booting linux is a sign that something else is wrong 
with the computer.  But switching OS'es after booting might be causing the 
scandisk problems.  We were unable to read the directory names on a second 
drive that we plugged in instead of the first one.  The directory names 
were gibberish after we changed from DR-DOS to Win98 DOS, but putting back 
DR-DOS restored the names.  Scandisk found 3M of bad stuff first.  

Win98 DOS is not a good cure for the 'not a kernel image' problem.

Is this computer likely to have DOS or Windows problems?  We promised to
replace a Win95 computer that we had made for a 5 year old.  That one was
hit by lightning but we bypassed the second onboard controller and
replaced the serial ports, however other things seem to be failing.  Might 
this be an improvement or would a reliable DX4 be better?