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Before I begin, let me apologize if
this is a double. I didn't realize it, but I sent the first one
before I was a member, so I am not
sure that it went through.
Hi,
I have an old copy
of Debian 1.3.1 on CD, and can also download whatever I need.
We are trying to set up an old 4-MB,
386 system (described below) with Linux, to use it as a mini-email
server for a Windows 95/98 ethernet
network. We are in Lithuania, which means that there is a lot
of
hardware that is unavailable, including (at the moment) old SIMMS, so we can't
upgrade the memory.
386 by TCI; 4 MB memory.
4 GB IDE hard drive.
VGA by OAK Technologies OTIVGA
5792108
Serial card is called "Super I/O Card",
FCC ID ID2-W83757
NIC: COMPEX ReadyLink2000A - PNP ethernet
card, NE2000 compat. IO address
200-2B0 Interrupt # unknown.
BIOS Ameri. Trends Current OS, DOS with
Windows for Workgroups (we wish to keep the DOS, and use
LOADLIN)No CD - ROM (we have one, but the
CD-ROM is not recognized by the system).
Additional potential problems:
(1) Sometimes when we leave the
computer on and untouched for long periods
of time, it locks up with a PARITY
CHECK message on the screen. (2) Although the NIC
nominally seems to work, we've never gotten it successfully interfaced with the
rest of the
network. Since we have no network experts, this could be due to our
stupidity.
From your Debian 2.2 documentation, it looks like
2.2 requires a minimum of 12 MB of Ram.
So that wouldn't be good for us. Likewise, I
tried looking at the "small" 2-MB version of Debian
that is supposed to be available, but the server
seems down, so that isn't available at the moment.
From the WGS Debian 1.3.1 CD, we made the 5 BASE
disks, the Rescue Disk, the Root disk and the
LMEMROOT disk. We also tried installing
through LILO. From the documentation that we got with 1.2.1,
it said we *had* to do a floppy install, we could
not do the loadlin install. However, as noted later, we
did try both, with different results.
From the Floppy Install, we put the rescue disk in
and booted up. The system came up to the initial
options page (where you can put command line
options, or look at the F1-F5 help pages). After
hitting Enter, it said "Loading Root.Bin ...
Loading Linux .... uncompressing Linux ... booting kernal ... Ramdisk:
Compressed image found at Block 0". And that is where it would stop
forever after. Note that it would never give me a chance to put the
LMEMROOT disk in, or acknowledge that it was low on memory.
Since I had a copy of lmemroot.bin in the main
directory of the hard disk, I tried telling the system "LINUX
root=/dev/hda1/lmemroot.bin" at the startup, but there was no
difference.
I also tried LOADLIN (sure, it said I couldn't do
it, but if nothing else is working ,why not give it a try.)
I got farther with that. I got to
"RAMDISK: MINIX - Filesystem found @ block 0. Loading 1200
blocks into RAM DISK ... \ " and it would stop there.
(By stop, I mean that it did nothing more for the
next 20 minutes. Not even spinning the little / \ - |
characters.)
Does anyone have a suggestion on what I can do to
get this system up and running? I am hoping to get this successfully
installed on the computer that hasn't run before, because that becomes an
increase in our assets without additional risk.
- Michael
Rudmin
8-4
Laisves Kvartalas
5730
Silute, Lithuania/Lietuva
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