SOLVED! Blinking Keyboard Light Error Condition Codes after early boot freeze

[Elizabeth Barham <lizzy@soggytrousers.net>]

Hi Kent,

   I'm replying to your letter on a computer that was booted off of a
floppy and telnet'd in to my main work station (that is to say, it
works!).

  Brad Cramer told me he had seen a similar error and deduced that it
was related to bad memory on his machine, but the on my machine it was
a kernel configuration error.

  It turns out that it was the

        o SCROLL LOCK (scrolllock)
          and the
        o CAPS LOCK (capslock)

and not the number lock LED that were blinking in unison.

   Anyway, the source of the error was that I did not enable the
Virtual Console option when configuring the kernel. During the boot,
one of the first things it does is try to figure out the video, and
since I had not specified any, it just plain halted.

   It is of note that a different error but one with the same
consequences (the kernel had no where to go so just shut down) did the
same blinking lights so apparently the specific lights themselves do
not mean something special, just that the kernel failed to boot up
properly.

   Thank you for all your help!

   Elizabeth