Thanks for more ideas guys. In fact I reinstalled mdk8.2 this evening. Now I have no access to my cdrom or the printer!

I'll be following up your suggestions moses, it'll be the first time I redo a kernel but I've got to try something...

Any luck?

Hi
You did a fresh install and still no luck, it did work
before, same hardware same distro.?
You did not make any hardware changes meanwhile,
or changed the bios settings?
Maybe you need to change in your bios, the setting for
autodetecting harddisk /cdrom's on your ide's.
Try cdrom instead on the ide where your cdrom is at.
regards

Thought I was getting somewhere, I put the bios on auto and modified fstab to hdd instead of scd0, cdrom access is back again.

scsi emu is ONLY AVAILABLE as a module, eg; <M> or < > and all other options are already correct.
kernel 2.4.18-6
I've got 2.5.12 and 2.5.22 on a cd, worth a try?

If SCSI emu is only available as a module, then you probably have SCSI
support as a module. Go to the next menu (SCSI support) and change the <M> in the first line to a <*> by hitting Y. Then go back to ATA IDE
menu and select <*> for the SCSI emu. . .

I don't know what Mdk does with the kernel, but it looks like you've got a
modified kernel. I would try getting the 2.4.19 kernel from
http://www.kernel.org and building that kernel, it works wonderfully for me.
Of course, that may not work because Mdk probably requires some of the
funky changes they've made. . . SIGH. Well, try it with the kernel that
came with your distro first, and if it doesn't work, then maybe try a kernel
from Linus. . .

I wouldn't try the 2.5.X kernel, it's development and WILL crash and cause
problems.

I used make xconfig instead and I sorted the problem straight away. Scsi support and emu were both as modules, changed to incorporated in the kernel.
But...
All went well untill make modules stopped with the following error:

make [2] : *** [eni.o] Error 1
make [2] : Quit the directory '/usr/src...
make [1] : *** [_modsubdir_atm] Error 2
make [1] : Quit the directory '/usr/src...
make : *** [_mod_drivers] Error 2

ps: I'm unable to paste into these message windows, I'm using Mozilla under kde2(reinstall No.2). There must be a keyboard shortcut?

which make comes with mdk?
if you have gmake, try that.

In order to paste, I select the text, and use the middle mouse button to
paste into the input field. If you don't have a three button mouse, KDE
may have control over which buttons do what, but for me I've always been
able to past by pressing both mouse buttons at the same time.

Anway, it would be good to get the full ouput of these errors as it will tell
us in which directory the error occured, and for which file. . .

Luckily (but unhappily) windoze is still working even if my linux installation is completely shot.
I don't have gmake.
In spite of recopying the original linux source directory safecopy "/usr/src/linux/lin..." back to it's original location, and recopying the kernel backup back to it's original location and name, my linux is screwed up!
Lots of modules missing and nothing seems to work again. I mean nothing! no printer, no xwindow, no floppy, no cd, no sound, no vfat fs......
I'm getting fed up with wasting time, I have done nothing productive for more than 2 weeks, just 2/3 hours every evening TRYING to make linux a working OS.
Going to reinstall again (4th time) when I'll have caught up on my sleep and finished my pile of correspendance (in windoze).

By the way, how to copy and paste the terminal output of make modules into a text file to attach to an e-mail? I'll need to redirect a copy of the output I think, using | ?

When I start to get frustrated, I find that I usually need to take a break
from the software for a day or two, and then come back to it with a clear
(and rested) head. . . Linux can be a frustrating experience if you don't
have a working install disk. Is there a reason you decided to go with Mdk?
If not, and you plan on reinstalling anyway, I would suggest you try a
different distro (I like Slackware, and it's not actually as difficult as people
seem to think).

My favorite way to log a lot of output to the console is the following, since
it not only saves the output, but also saves the input. Input the following
before you start your build:

script

This will start up a shell that logs every keystroke and every character sent
to standard out (the console). When you are done with your build, you
type:

exit

When you exit, you'll receive a message telling you what the filename of
the log is (usually typescript, in the directory you started the log).

Why did I choose Mandrake?
Simple really, when I first started sniffing around Linux forums as anonymous, or reading linux mags, this was a distribution often recomended for it's ease of use. The 3 cds packed full of goodies for $15 was also a good reason!

I'm going to try the script/exit trick straght away, thanks.

I have now a Slackware 8.1 disk and I downloaded the 2.4.19 kernel this morning (wife absent hee hee) which amazingly took only 1 h 50 m with my dial up 56k!

I'll be checking out hardware compatibility before deciding anything:
promise ata100 onboard hdd controller;
Hercules 3d prophet Kyro II
Matshushita cdr-w cw-7585
AMD 900 at 990 on a Asus A7V
etc...

news soon, any tips? Have a good week-end you all.

I'm assuming you're going to install Slack. . .
I actually don't have any great tips about installing Slackware, it's actually
got a pretty good, straightforward (if not a "slick as snot" GUI) setup
interface. Just read the intro you get when you first boot from the CD,
and then go down the list in setup (once you get to the setup step).

Basically, if you have the space (~2G), install everything that comes with
Slack, and you can be sure you haven't left anything off. You won't have
the newest packages, but you'll have packages that have been tested to
work well with each other, and you'll know you haven't left anything off.

There is one thing that I've only recently discovered about a couple of
other distros, and that's that some of them have included some pretty
old kernel code that was being developed to keep track of changes to
removable media devices. Slackware uses the unmodified kernels, and
that code was never officially included, so you'll have to get used to
mounting and umounting removable media. . .

Hi there moses, still taking things easy this evening. Whilst downloading the "non-rpm" driver for my graphics card I read this in the installation notes:

Slackware distribution note: if you are using the original kernel and kernel source that were installed, check if the source is configured the same as the kernel you are running. In particular a SMP mismatch will cause the resulting powervr kernel module to fail to depmod/insmod with kernel_flag undefined.

I do not really understand;
1. How to check if the source and running kernel are configured the same?
2. How to rectify?

To be honest, I don't actually understand that either. I have installed many
different kernels and have never had a problem. I don't know the context
from whence it came, but I'm guessing the note concerns installing/building
modules with the kernel source that came with Slack, and making sure
you don't change the configuration of the source w/o rebuilding the kernel.
If you build a module against source that isn't what the kernel was built
with, you'll get errors.
Regardless, this isn't something you need to worry about if you plan on
building your own kernel.