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Message from Steven
===================
Mikael Bonnier wrote:
>
> I can boot BL 3.50 (from bl3-50fd.zip) on an AST 
> Ascentia P series laptop from floppy.  I have 
> installed it to HD (/dev/hda1). 

When you installed it to HD, did you change anything
in /etc/lilo.conf before you ran "lilo -v" ?

Did you use the provided lilo.conf?  Or did you use
lilo and/or lilo.conf from some other distribution?

When you installed BL3 to HD, did you execute 
install-to-hd from a fresh boot from floppy?  
Or had you edited/deleted some files first?

> It boots normally from HD but right at the end when 
> it has printed issue it hangs. It prints "...to 
> activate cdrom/network/pcmcia." and then hangs.

That comes from /etc/issue (which is executed by /etc/rc).  
Clearly, the kernel is booting OK and the filesystem is
found and read.  So you are nearly there.  

Three possible causes for your problem immediately come 
to mind:
(1) error in filesystem due to some sort of hardware fault 
(2) partitioning and/or e2fs formatting error
(3) your filesystem is readable, but not writeable

Please give us some more details on how you did the
installation.  In particular, did you use the BL3 fdisk,
BL3 mke2fs, and BL3 lilo to do the installation?  Or 
did you perhaps use an old partition (or old lilo or 
old filesystem) prepared by a different distribution?

> It does not print "Please press Enter...". It doesn't 
> respond to any keys, except Ctrl+Alt+Delete (so it is 
> not compleatly dead). However, I can boot from HD 
> without hanging if I first boot from floppy and enter 
> "hd root=/dev/hda1". 

So, it appears the partition/filesystem are OK.  That
would seem to indicate that the problem is from lilo
(since the lilo on the floppy is booting OK).  So, we
should first focus on your lilo.  I'm guessing you are 
booting (perhaps accidentally) from an old pre-existing 
lilo that was set to boot read-only (most versions of
Linux boot read-only).  BL3 boots read-write, and will 
fail if you try to boot it read-only.

If you show us a copy of your lilo.conf, we should be
able to figure out what is happening.

Cheers,
Steven