I installed mdk9.2, which comes with a modified 2.4.22 kernel. I needed pppoATM support so i downloaded the 2.4.23 (standard) kernel source and successfully compiled and run it. Then i noticed that i have no supermount support so i re-compiled the 2.4.22mdk to have atm support. Everything went okay. But the drivers that i needed the modified kernel for (i'm not compiling kernel for fun, you know!) are made for a 2.4.16 kernel (they are binaries, i can't find anything better) and neither kernel 22 nor 23 could use those drivers. I read that the 19 and 20 kernel could handle the drivers... So i tried with 2.4.19mdk, but failed in bzImage. I tried the 2.4.19 and failed again. Finally i tried with a 2.4.20 and make bzImage failed again (on ide-cd.o!). Seems like i can't compile any kernel older than the 2.4.22...
what could be the problem?

What driver do you have that requires 2.4.16 kernel?

I would not recommend you go backwards with your kernel.

I've got an Itex based ADSL PCI card and the latest drivers are for 2.4.16 (binary). Some people reported that it can work up to 19 or 20, but that's all, the 2.4.22mdk is not a good kernel, because they have changed something in the ATM code.

So i HAVE to get an older kernel. I'm not choosing anything. Eventually i'll go crazy, dump that PCI shit and buy an ethernet ADSL modem, but that's not an option now.

I've re-compiled a 2.4.19 kernel to give you some info about the compile process...

Last interesting lines of the make bzImage output:
gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/usr/src/linux-2.4.19/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -Wno-trigraphs -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -march=athlon -nostdinc -I /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i586-mandrake-linux-gnu/3.3.1/include -DKBUILD_BASENAME=semaphore -c -o semaphore.o semaphore.c
semaphore.c:265:1: missing terminating " character
semaphore.c:290:1: missing terminating " character
make[1]: *** [semaphore.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.19/arch/i386/kernel'
make: *** [_dir_arch/i386/kernel] Error 2

i know a little C and line 265 of semaphore.c looks like this:
----------
functionname(
"
the string has been opened
on another line, but you can do that in c right?
", anotherargument)
-----------
which i suppose is perfectly legal c.

and here you can find my config file...
http://space.virgilio.it/r.pelizzi@virgilio.it/config
if you'd be so kind to take a look at that.
I'm not good at compiling kernels, but i compiled 2.4.22mdk and 2.4.23 with pretty much the same options and everything went fine...

help me plz

Have uou tried a pre-built kernel? If you go back to Mandrake-9.0 you can get a 2.4.19 kernel. Since the driver is a binary you are not going to compile it against the kernel sources so you don't really need to build your own kernel.

Here is a link if you want to try it.
ftp://mandrake.mirrors.pair.com/mand...-1mdk.i586.rpm

Sorry you have to login anonymous to download it.