Hi everybody, I'm new here, and I would like by the way apologize for my english, since I'm not a native speaker.

I just got an "old" Pentium II 400 on a Asus P2B MB w/ 128MB and a 40GB HD (master, I updated the bios, everything's working fine) and a basic Creative CD drive, perfectly recognized too (slave). I wish I could install a Linux distrib on it...

BUT...

With the Mandrake 9.1:
No problem to boot on the installer, the screen appears where I can choose between running the installer <press enter> or more options <F1>. Everything works fine until...
"I can't access a Mandrake Linux Installation disc in your CDROM drive (creativeCD3630E)"
Then, i have to choose in a HUGE list of drivers to "gain SCSI access".
But there is nothing related to SCSI in my -future- Linux box...

With the Red Hat 9:
I can reach the main page, with the red hat image, then "running/sbin/loader", then it asks me to choose a language and a keyboard. 'Til that point no problem, but it finally decides that:
"The RedHat Linux CD was not found on any of your CDROM drives. Please insert the Red Hat CD..."
And if it tests the CD, it pretends there is a failure... even if it boooted on it!!

Weird, no ???

If anybody has an idea (else than suggesting to change the jumpers of my drives... they are ok, thanks and my bios agree with me), he is warmly welcome!!

Tried setting CD-ROM as master?

Hi,

I had a similar problem. I was about to despair and give up, but then I tried a different CDROM drive. That one wasn't recognised, so I tried yet another.

Success. And my Linux box lived happily ever after.

So try a different CDROM, I saw a deal where you could get 2 for £5 new at one of those computer fairs...

www.britishcomputerfairs.com

Hope that helps.

I just tried with the CD drive/burner of a friend... but if I plugg it, the screen simply refuses to start!! Funny, no ?? And don't ask for any relationship between a CD burner and a display, I have no clue !!!

However, I didn't think of exchanging the master/slave position between HD and CD drive...

Thanx for the tricks, I'm gonna try right now!

Be probably right back...

Here I'm back... Despaired

Even exchanging the master/slave doesn't help...

I don't want any f***ing Microsoft install in that box, but I've no solutions left.

If anyone else has a suggestion...

madrake my not have your ide controller driver. or it may be a problematic drive. perhapse a bad disk, have you any way of checking any of these?

I burnt both Red Hat and Mandrake CDs with the Disk Utility under Mac OS X, from .iso images.
But I don't think it changes anything, since the CD can be booted... I will check on another pc.

did you check the integrity of the iso image after download with md5sums ?

I don't know what the utility would be from macOS, but in linux it would just be:

md5sum filename.iso

and it'll return something like :

80e7b163c4b5a074f6fe38d01a9cfa8b VL4.0.iso

Check that against the md5s posted where you downloaded it from.


Another possibility -- I've never been able to install RedHat 9.0 on this computer, no matter what. Same problem you had, it somehow couldn't find the installation media, no matter if it tried to autodetect, or I specified its location at /dev/hdc. Mandrake, however, had no problems.
Check to see if your IDE controller is somehow uniquely uncommon.

-Shade

Finally, my flatmate lend me his Pioneer DVD drive instead of my Creative CD drive, and the media check passed (it failed before, w/ the Creative)... Quite incredible, but my drive was unable to read the CD correctly...

No comment... OK, the Macintosh is usually more expensive, but at least such jokes doesn't appear... (end of topic, I'm not a troll...)

Thanx for all your answers, that's really cool, and see you soon probably, since I'm now a complete Linux Newbie...