hi, i have the a new dual-boot (win98 and rh 8.0) new box:
- a7v8x asus -- 1900+ AMD K7 Athlon XP -- 512 MB
- 2 40 IDE GB hard disks (first drive for win98, second for rh 8.0)
(on oboard IDE controller)
- DVD ROM (on onboard IDE controller)
- CD RW 48x16x48x (on onboard IDE controller)
- LS-120 (instead of floppy drive) (on card IDE controller)
- intelimouse PS/2
- MS web keyboard (102 standard keys plus web keys)
- KDE Radius Rad 7c LCD monitor (17 inch, max 1280x1024)
- 64MB GeoForce4 AGP

initially, only win98 was installed on first drive

-- things worked just fine for booting win98.

BUT, when i installed RH 8.0, i could not get to see grub. After a while, the screen would go bright and then dark several times, and then win98 would boot. (i had selected it as the default OS)

I tried installing lilo instead (in both cases to the MBR of the first disk -- the windows one). Same result. No lilo prompt seen at all.

I tried booting from the boot diskette. NO GO. The drive just seems to go into an endless loop, trashing about, and nothing is seen on the screen. I had to power off for fear of damaging the LS-120.

I tried reinstalling RH 8.0 several times. Same result. Never can see a prompt from lilo or grub. And I am using all the RH 8.0 installation defaults. (generic monitor, for example -- i tried selecting flat panel at 1024x768 and 1280x1024: no luck)

As an aside, I have the Award Medallion 6.0 BIOS. There is something weird there: it does not tell me I can use 'Delete' to get into Setup. And it ignores 'Delete'. Instead tells me to press F-something if I want to configure RAID. (which I dont want)

So, I cannot even check or change my BIOS settings. If I could, I would just install lilo on the MBR of the second disk, and tell the BIOS to use that disk for booting. (i need linux far more than win98 !)

Or I could open the box, and just switch the 2 disks, so that the linux disk would be the boot disk. (no need to mess with the BIOS then)

I wonder if the monitor has anything to do with this ? it works fine under win98 ! -- but it does not show anything from lilo or grub.
As for the LS-120 ? what is up with that boot floppy ?

Would love to get some comments/suggestions.

OK,
some things have been cleared up:
a) the KDS Rad-7c is the reason why i cannot see my boot loaders.
I tried with and old Dell monitor and then i can see grub output.

Could someone tell me why the KDS would not work ? I just dont
know enough about monitors and how they interface with the graphics
card and the system. I only know that the RH 8.0 installation program
could make it work, because i used it for running that.

b) about entering the BIOS setup and the Delete key, the key was working,
and the setup screen was displayed (i can see it with the Dell monitor).
Since the KDS remained blank, i had assumed the BIOS was ignoring the key.

my great relish to be able to see the grub screen with the dual boot options
was greatly diminished when i selected red hat and got:

root(hd1,0)
filesytem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=LABEL=/ hdh=ide-scsi
[linux.bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0x10ea0d]

Err 28: selected item cannot fit into memory

Press any key to continue...

---------
so, what is going on here ? i dont know in what units the size is measured, but
512MB of memory should be plenty... is there something about low/high memory that
is biting me ?

as i said before, i had chosen all the defaults for the RH 8.0 install -- i
expected it to work !

thanks -- josie

PS: so, is that KDS monitor useless under linux ?

I had the exact same problem with an ASUS A7N266-VM MoBo. I upgraded to GRUB .93 and was finally able to boot. You can get it from here: http://people.debian.org/~nobse/debi...ckported/grub/

hi pat, thanks for the reply.

i am pretty green on grub. Since the RH 8.0 installation is the one that setup grub (and gave it whatever parameters it is using), i am not clear at all on how would i plugin the grub 9.3 into the MBR, and how to give it the proper parameters.

could you please send me a numbered list of the steps to take ?

thanks pat ! - josie

I posted a complete walkthru titled
Red Hat 8.0 and ASUS A7N266-VM/LAN/AA walkthru

I'm not sure how to link to a post but this might take you there, otherwise you can search for it.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...287#post252287