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sindi keesan wrote:
>
> This computer does not appear to be very good for 
> linux but DOS works fine.  Why?  

Linux exercises the hardware more.  It is quite common
to see DOS running happily on a system with a dud RAM 
chip (What me worry?).  But on the same system, Linux 
crashes immediately.

> Perhaps this is a bug affecting this model motherboard 

Perhaps.  There are fixes in the 2.2.16 kernel sourcecode 
for certain motherboards.  To see which motherboards, go 
to a Slackware 7.1 site (or CDrom) and search the following
file for "motherboard"
---------------------------------
/docs/linux-2.2.16/Configure.help
---------------------------------  
To see which of those fixes has been included in the 
BL3 (or BL2) kernel, read the kernel config file at 
the BasicLinux site.  To see which fixes are in the
bare.i kernel, read the config file that accompanies
that kernel.

> Does linux strain the hardware more than DOS?

Yes, Linux uses the available resources to the max.
 
> Maybe the SIMMs are causing part of this problem 

That's possible.  I recommend a thorough RAM tester,
like MEMTEST (which can be downloaded free).
 
> WOuld memory cause this sort of problem with unzipping 
> files?  

Probably not bad RAM (which usually crashes Linux right
away).  However unzipping a large file does put pressure
on your CPU and RAM (which might be triggering a hardware
issue).  Is your RAM perhaps being shared with the video
card?  Or is there anything else unusual about your RAM
(for example, I recall something about certain systems 
having a "memory hole").  Perhaps there is a parameter
in your CMOS setup for turning off such features?

Cheers,
Steven

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