boot problems with Industrial Computer Systems system

[Jim Ziegler <jcz@ziplink.net>]

We have several ICS systems here that I would like to run
Debian on.  Some of them work fine, but some will not
get past the syslinux stage, they get to the point of
printing "Loading..." and then reboot.

This behavior occurs with both the slink and the
potato boot disks, including the "safe" versions.

I have been able to get potato to run on these systems
with the following procedure:

  Create a 2.2.17 kernel that is tailored to the 
  target system. (Nothing special, just an aic7xxx
  scsi device and an etherexpress16 nic)

  Create a boot disk that boots using lilo (this
  implies ext2) with the above kernel and an
  initrd that loads the slink root.bin.

  Write a slink boot disk (umsdos) and replace
  the kernel with the tailored one above.

  Boot the target system with the lilo boot disk.

  Load the root.bin disk when prompted.

  Load the syslinux boot disk when prompted.

  Off we go....

Clearly, the problem is in syslinux, but this
is a work around for anyone with similar
problems.

Should I file a bug report on syslinux?

-- 
jcz@espllc.com (Jim Ziegler)