Tweak away, and I think you are right it probably said linuxold.
--------------
[root@lancelot mike]# cat /etc/lilo.conf
prompt
timeout=50
default=Linux
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
compact
lba32


image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-10
label=Linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-10.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda2

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3
label=LinuxOld
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda2[root@lancelot mike]# ls -Al /boot/
total 9061
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 512 Aug 31 12:21 boot.0300
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5824 Jun 24 2001 boot.b
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 612 Jun 24 2001 chain.b
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 40589 Aug 7 10:07 config-2.4.18-10
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 39999 Apr 18 06:40 config-2.4.18-3
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Aug 29 18:18 grub
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 128961 Aug 29 18:06 initrd-2.4.18-10.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 144421 Sep 1 11:23 initrd-2.4.18-3.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 473 Aug 28 22:39 kernel.h
drwx------ 2 root root 12288 Aug 28 16:35 lost+found
-rw------- 1 root root 7168 Sep 1 16:25 map
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 23108 Jun 24 2001 message
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Aug 29 18:06 module-info -> module-info-2.4.18-10
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14431 Aug 7 10:07 module-info-2.4.18-10
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14431 Apr 18 06:40 module-info-2.4.18-3
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 640 Jun 24 2001 os2_d.b
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 Aug 29 18:24 System.map -> System.map-2.4.18-3
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 476082 Aug 7 10:07 System.map-2.4.18-10
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 474261 Apr 18 06:40 System.map-2.4.18-3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2883809 Aug 7 10:07 vmlinux-2.4.18-10
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2868043 Apr 18 06:40 vmlinux-2.4.18-3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Aug 29 18:06 vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-2.4.18-10
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1043221 Aug 7 10:07 vmlinuz-2.4.18-10
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1041347 Apr 18 06:40 vmlinuz-2.4.18-3
[root@lancelot mike]# mount /mnt/floppy
mount: /dev/fd0 already mounted or /mnt/floppy busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/fd0 is already mounted on /mnt/floppy
[root@lancelot mike]# ls -Al /mnt/floppy/
total 1166
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 203 Aug 28 20:59 boot.msg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 144421 Aug 28 20:59 initrd.img
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 6192 Aug 28 20:59 ldlinux.sys
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 122 Aug 28 20:59 syslinux.cfg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1041347 Apr 18 11:40 vmlinuz
[root@lancelot mike]# md5sum /mnt/floppy/initrd.img
c45261357379d4897b9814d7eff0d8f8 /mnt/floppy/initrd.img
[root@lancelot mike]# md5sum /boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img
c45261357379d4897b9814d7eff0d8f8 /boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img
[root@lancelot mike]#

okay. paste the stuff between to replace your lilo.conf
---------------------------
prompt
timeout=50
default=Linux3
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
root=/dev/hda2
read-only

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3
label=Linux3

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-10
label=Linux10

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3
label=Linux3i
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-10
label=Linux10i
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-10.img

----------------------------------------
run /sbin/lilo(post listing)and reboot. Try 3,10,3i,10i in the order it appears.
How old/new is your system? Looks pretty new from your disk size. Or did you buy yourself a new disk? I wonder if your BIOS is handling the big guy properly.

I will give that a try and let you know what happens in a minute. This box is pretty much an antique. Its an AMD K6-300 with 160meg of ram. The drive is only like 4.3gig.

well I tried that and went down the list like 3 times. each one and each time got a different result but no boot.

first time around
3 just hung at loading linux3
10 reebooted itself after getting to loading linux 10
3i got to uncompressing and then got "out of memory-system halted"
10i rebooted itself

second time
3 same as first time
10 error 0x80 running up the screen and the floppy drive clicking
3i got to uncompressing the "incomplete literal tree-system halted"
10i ran out of input data message

I ran through the first 2 again and it hung then rebooted so I gave up there. Also, the lilo screen was all jumbled up like the graphics all different colors and real rough looking. This happened about half the times and I never saw that before. Im wondering if maybe I should reinstall with lilo instead of grub from the get go.

Wow. what a can of worms!
Would you add the following line right after where it says read-only in lilo.conf?
linear

After this, you can post your lilo.conf.
post your latest lilo.conf, run /sbin/lilo and reboot.

added that line and ran /snin/lilo, heres what I got

3 incomplete literal tree error
10 rebooted itself
3 irebooted
10i crc error

I thought your disk was more like 40GB. One zero too many, hehe. Dont know if it is your bios not being able to load the sectors mapped out by lilo ( or grub for that matter ).

If you're choosing to reinstall, I would like you to try and do a manual partitioning of the disk - destroy all partitions, make 2 primaries, the second one about the RAM size of your machine, format it as a swap partition and the first one occupies the rest of the disk formatted as Linux Native ext3, mounted as /

Dont know for sure if that would help, but I guess there's nothing to lose by trying.And yes, lilo all the way.

Na, that machine is one that I pulled out of the stack in the attic. I read that Linux will run good on old machines and I was intrigued. Actually that was a damn good win 98 machine but seems like it really crawls along with Linux. Dont know whats up with that. I would have thought that it has plenty of memory, but it takes a really long time to open amy applications. Like just email or web browsers take an excrutiatingly long time to load. I wonder if it has to do with the HD being slow, but it seened OK under windows. I have 3 18gig scsi drives that I was thinking about trying out and see if that speeds it up any.

I'll bring you up to date here. I reinstalled yesterday and went with LILO. It didnt seem to like it much. The LILO screen was all jumbled and goofy colors, and when I tried to boot into LInux the machine would just reboot like I had hit the reset button. I tried it several times for good measure and ended up getting a different error message every time. Then once booted from the floppy, it had all kinds of issues. I figured maybe that was because I had loaded KDE as well as Gnome this time to fiddle around with it a little bit. I thought that maybe they were butting heads. So anyway, last night I reinstalled again because the thing was pretty much unusable. I tried putting the boot loader on the first sector of the boot partition instead of the MBR to see what would happen, as I figuresd pretty much nothing, but as always I can boot to the floppy and it seems to work decent.

I may give it another shot tonight and try like you said with the manual partition. You said to make 2 partitions. Don't I need a minimum of three? Or are you saying to put the boot loader on the main partition and forget about a boot partition?

Considering that I started my stint with linux - slackware crdom from a QUE book - on a 486DX2--66 MHz with *get this* 4 MB of RAM - X installed , I thought it was heaven(minus some), you should be doing fine on your 300 MHz supermachine. But since then, linux distros have improved and bloated and what not, so if you think you're slow I would ask you to use a light WM to reduce the overhead, take the wallpapers away if you can live without it and with 160MB of RAM you should come along pretty smoothly. Use switchdesk to switch desktops, or better edit your .xinitrc to use a bare-bones WM like twm. Do you see/hear a lot of HD activity ( an indication of swapping ) while operation?

Yes, I'm just trying to see if the kernel was written to a different set of sectors (than the ones the autoinstaller chooses ) it would make any difference. Or better, make 4( that's the most number allowed) primary partitions (50M,50M,200M,rest) use the 200M one for swap. Use fdisk during setup.

Thats the thing, everything that I read about linux says that it will run good on old 486 machines. This definately isnt the fastest thing out there but Its also a far cry from a 486-50 with 16meg which I read will run linux pretty well. The hard drive on this thing runs constantly, Is that a sign of too little memory? I would think 160 would be more than enough. I installed red hat on my old 400 pII laptop that only has 192 meg and it seems to run along pretty decent. I always thought it ran kinda slow on win2k pro. I do a few extra drives laying around that are only like 520meg-1gig, think it would help performance to install one of those an the second IDE channel and put the swap partition on it so that it isnt trying to read & write to the same drive all the time?

2 things:

a) If you're using a standard ( redhat stock; built on daffy-the-intel-box or similar ) kernel, some of your problems might stem from that issue itself. There are a few AMD specific options that you can compile a kernel with which might have general functonality and/or performance implications. I haven't had an experiences with AMD processors so can't help you there. Maybe you should read the KERNEL HOWTO for more info on that.

b) If you're seeing a lot of disk activity when there shouldnt be, the first thing to suspect is the virtual memory usage. I agree that 160M should be more than enough but maybe you should use the command 'free' to see how much memory the kernel thinks ( this might be less than 160, not very common, but cannot be ruled out with older MoBos) you have.

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 159156 156408 2748 0 1928 53004
-/+ buffers/cache: 101476 57680
Swap: 326584 272 326312

---------------
sure seems like Im using an assload of memory for not doing anything. When I ran this I had evolution open to check mail, galeon and the terminal window.

doesnt seem like those few apps should eat up that much to me.

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 159156 129616 29540 0 2012 49880
-/+ buffers/cache: 77724 81432
Swap: 326584 272 326312

---------------------------
I closed everything but the terminal window, removed my background picture, and set the theme back to default and Im still burning up 130meg at an idle. Is linux that memory intensive as a general rule?

You're doing good, I think. Out of the 160M, you're USEing only 101M ( The used section in the first line indicates the amount of memory that is 'engaged' so you should look at the second line of the output : actual used memory = engaged memory - buffers - cache. )

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 514368 369084 145284 0 114904 72204
-/+ buffers/cache: 181976 332392
Swap: 1542200 0 1542200

That is output from my machine. I'm using 181M.

do you have DMA switched on for your harddisk? try running /sbin/hdparm /dev/hda and post the listing. also try to test the speeds using options -Tt to above.

also post the output of cat /proc/cpuinfo. Let us see what the kernel thinks about your processor.

I believe that I have DMA on. I went through my spare parts box and managed to rustle up a 256 meg stick and a 6.4 gig drive but I imagine its a 5400rpm drive just like the one in there now. I will check out the HD and processor like you said, and add replace the 64meg stick with the 256 and see what happens. If it still bogs with 384meg then I give up.