Mandrake 10 hangs install right after loading linux
 

I wanted to install Linux on the following old laptop:
Pentium1 75MhZ, 40MB RAM, 775 MB HD, PCMCIA with a Linksys Ethernet card.

It has no CDROM drive so I wanted to do a network install.

I installed Debian very nicely from the network (4 times). Boot + root floppies, 4 driver floppies, and then it downloaded the rest.

Now I am trying mandrake. I download and raw-wrote the network.img from
mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/Mandrakelinux/official/10.0/i586/images
(add ftp: // to it, the forum didn't let)

But right after uncompressing and loading linux, it hangs.

The last thing I see is undefined video mode, jump to 80x25. So I thought that was the problem. But when loading it with the options vgalo, or vga16, or even text, that line disappeared, and still it hung. Using the 'noauto' switch didn't help.

I tried the pcmcia.img file also, same result, and then i tried the network.img from the /alternate folder on that same FTP mirror, same result.

I also tried downloading the all.rdz and vmlinuz files and using loadlin.exe from DOS. It also hung after loading linux.

Need help, very badly!!! What can I do?

Thanks a lot.

Sorry, I realized I phrased my question very badly, so I went and rephrased it. Please help.

Would it help to wipe the whole hard drive? I don't want to do that since it takes about half an hour to install debian, and another 15 min for Xfree86...

Please, please help!

Wow a third one today!

Mandrake is compiled for a minimum machine spec of i586.

While it is supposed to work on your machine, there are numerous reports of it not functioning on P-II's and below.

There is an older release for i386's which will probably work on your computer.

I actually opened another thread b|c no one could help with this one, and asked even for generic help... but yes, got the same answer in the other thread.

So where is the i386 release? I think that would have to be 6.0, is it even useful or is debian better?

You can get older versions of Mandrake here
ftp://mirror.fis.unb.br/pub/linux/Mandrake-old/

and here
ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake-old/