Recently my Slackware 10.1 distro locked up with a kernel messages and flags. I went to reboot and now can no longer boot into the system. During bootup, I get a "hda drive not ready for command" error. After a few of these, there is a kernel panic and the system just quits booting.

It is a really old computer. Pentium class with about 300-450Mhz (cannot recall exactly, but old). Probably has about 64MB of ram.

The problem is that I can't or don't know how to boot into a type of recovery console in Slackware to do a check disk or other diagnostic utilities. Normally, Slackware would drop into a command prompt at the console (single user?). But this time, it is not dropping into anything.

Are there any boot commands or parameters I can give to allow it to boot without the hard drive and possibly use a RAM disk? Any solutions that will allow me to get to some type of recovery console would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to have to rebuild my system. Thanks.

Try to boot with the install disk1 from your cd's. It has the command right there to boot with. If what is happening what I think is happening, that may not work....(Sounds like the HDD got hosed....))

I agree with cwwilson721 but would respectfully like to add ...

Go to the website of your hard drive manufacturer and download their utility for testing your drive. It will more than likely be available to download as in .iso image which you can burn to CD. If not, then a floppy image. Either way, boot your computer with it and do the Advanced test on your drive. Time will tell...