Can't get 3.0 installer to work on Tyan Thunder K7
Synopsis: Can't install Debian.
Details: I'm using the ~186MB "woody-isolinux.iso" boot image. The target
system is a Tyan Thunder K7, with onboard 3Com ethernet, and an Adaptec
2100s RAID controller.
If I boot from the default, it seems to think it has a network, but no disk
drivers. If I try to load drivers from a floppy, it complains that it can't
mount the floppy. I'm just using disks made from the driver-N.bin images,
which look as though they're just large gzipped files. The exact message
is "Critical Error", "Unable to mount the floppy disk, can't continue."
If I try to use bf24, which I'm told should have the "DPT" drivers I need,
I don't get either network *or* disk drivers.
If what I'm supposed to do is not "put driver-1 on a disk and put it in
the drive", I'm stumped. (It does seem like maybe the driver-n images should
be readable from the CD?)
FWIW, this may have to do with system quirks; this Debian CD is the only CD
I've been able to boot on this system, every other disk or floppy I've tried
just stops at a blinking cursor around the time it should be either booting
or saying it can't find a system disk.
System is Athlon MP (just one for now) 1800+, 512MB memory, IDE CD, regular
floppy, and disks attached via RAID controller. Nothing else very exciting.
I can't find a clear answer to the question "what is this network card", but
it appears to be a 3Com, and FreeBSD drives it with the xl0 driver.
-s
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