Debian floppy install problem
Hi; I'm a linux newbie trying to convert from Windows to Debian on a
Gateway Solo 2500; it runs a Pentium II 266, 64 Megs ram. CD-Rom is
disabled and I'm too cheap/poor to buy a new one, so I have to use either
a HD or floppy install. I've got about 2.5 gigs on the first partition
running (shudder) WinME, second partition unformatted 2.5 gigs.
For the problem. When I try to boot from the boot floppies, everything
goes fine until it comes time to load the root into RAM. I place the root
disk in the drive and hit enter--and nothing happens. That is, the drive
fails to read from the floppy; the little "floppy reading" idiot-light on
the Gateway's panel comes on, but the drive (which is a noisy little
fella) is silent and its own read light never comes on. Then I get the error
"end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 0" repeated about
five times; the fifth replaces sector 0 with sector 2 and then it asks
again for the root floppy.
Something similar happens when I try a WinME HD install; after it
recognizes my partitions and says something about MS-DOS (I take it it's
giving me a report on the first partition) it says "Kernel Panic: Unable
to mount root fs on 01:00." I can't tell if this is the same problem or a
different one; it looks to me like it doesn't like something about
I thought it might be floppy/file error with the root image, so I
re-downloaded the image both to the HD and to a new floppy, but that
would only make sense as the problem if I got the error *after* the drive
had been accessed. It claims to recognize the drive, though, since one of
the things the kernel spits out at me is that "fd0 is 1.44" megs.
Also, I worry it might be a problem with shadowed RAM. According to the
BIOS when I boot up, it is indeed shadowed; the documentation says I
should disable it, but I cannot see any way to do it in the BIOS setup.
(The BIOS is an EEP revision 9.0, as far as I can make out).
Any help at all would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Jason
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