Kent West wrote:
Apparently the Dell Optiplex 320 is one odd piece of computer; the
'Net is full of people having trouble installing Linux on it. And
I've just spent a day and a half trying to find a version of Windows
that would install on it so I could update the BIOS to the most
recent version, hoping that'd help.
The best solution I've seen so far is to use this line at the
installer's (Etch, I believe) LILO prompt:
boot: install pci=nomsi
That gets me farther than anything else I've tried, but when it tries
to find the CD-ROM, it can't find the drive. (Apparently there's
something really mucky about the SATA controller on this particular
model of Dell.)
So I tried going the route of doing a network install via
http://www.goodbye-microsoft.com, but it installs grub and doesn't
give me any option to feed the "pci=nomsi" parameter (or any other
similar parameters); I've been unable to find a way to force this
grub install to let me add boot arguments.
Anyone have any suggestions?
(Wow! I never thought I'd consider a Dell to be absolute cr*p, but
this is it.)
Thanks!
http://faculty.acu.edu/~westk/optiplex320-debian.txt