"Unknown VIA SouthBridge" message

I have been unable to get DSL to run from the CD on my computer.
M/B is an asus P5V800-MX, LGA775 socket, 2.8Ghz processor, 1024MbRAM.
It runs fine on an older 1.2Ghz system, and I have been able to load DSL to the hard drive on that system. Loading it on a 40Gb Seagate drive in the old machine and transferring that drive to the later machine does not help either.
I can get as far as a message which reads -
"VP_IDE: Unknown VIA SouthBridge, disabling DMA"
and there it halts. Nothing works from that point. Other than a complete reboot.

Anyone have any suggestions? Any help appreciated.

You didn't mention which distribution are you using, may be your kernel doesn't knows how to handle the southbridge that you are using. Try upgrading to deent ditribution with a recent kernel.

Not sure how best to answer that. I am very much a starter
with Linux.

The kernel which loads on boot up is 2.4.26 and
the LiLo version is 22.5.7.2

What is the latest distro version?

I would first ask you try out a live CD of some popular distribution like Mandriva Move, Suse Live, Slax or PcLinuxOs. Try booting from liveCD and see if everything goes fine. If satisfied then you may install that particular distribution, I perosnally prefer Pclinuxos derived from Mandriva, and Slax for its compactness. Try it out and I think it should work fine, unless you have a corrupted hardware. For a complete list of Live CDs visit www.livecdlist.com

What is the latest distro version?

There are about 400 flavors of Linux available depending upon your requirements. For a complete list visit www.distrowatch.com.

I have tried several of the other distros - Knoppix 4.0, Red Hat 8 and Ubuntu 5.1, and have not had a problem getting them installed and to run. I was interested in Damn Small Linux mainly for its small size and portability.
I have had more luck getting my Canon printer to work with DSL than with the other distros.
I am just rather intrigued as to what the problem is with the non-compatability with DSL, considering I can run the embedded version with any trouble.
The version of DSL is 2.4rca.

All the "unknown" means is that there is no known name for that particular device. There is a file that maps pci ids -> names, which is usually found at /usr/share/pci.ids. If a particular device is not listed in that file, it will show up as "unknown". But this has nothing to do with whether or not it is supported. They may be a driver for that device, but the pci.ids database hasn't been updated yet. Considering that this is a southbridge, which should all be standard stuff (ide etc), there shouldn't be any problem, so this is puzzling. The southbrige is, I believe, an 8251, which it pretty new. I would guess it's just a problem with the particular kernel/configuration that this version of DSL uses.

I you are looking at samm size distro with better hardware support, you need to try out this. Select the one which is best suits you.

Other better small live is "Puppy Linux".

ioerror

Thanks for that info.
Had a look for "/usr/share/pci.ids" but does not exist in either of the DSL (embedded ot live CD) distros.

However I did find pci.ids in the "/usr/share/misc" folder, but no mention of the chip.

The Southbridge chipset is a VTA8251.

I will keep looking.