This is a real long shot. I am having trouble getting an Osborne Computers 486DX2 machine to boot from CD. I Have a Smallwall distro that I want to put on it to let it act as a firewall. The machine finishes its memory count, tries to boot from floppy and harddisk (previously zapped by a failed RH8 install - not enough memory) and does not even try the CD drive anymore (it used to before RH nuked it.)

Any ideas appreciated.

Thanks.

I wasnt aware that a 486Dx2 Could boot from a cd.. wow..
anyway...
Press Delete, or F1, or Esc.. or whatever key it says to press during the start up memory test, and browse around the bios, you should find a page that says something like.. Startup or Bootup order, with CD, Floppy, HD and the order the computer checks them in upon startup

Have you got the boot order in the BIOS right?

Does the CD boot in another machine?

Have you tried starting with a floppy?

Yes, 486 used to be able to boot from CD (or at least this one did - Osborne made great machines). I tried the CMOS setup but there is no way to set boot order :-(

Er and sorry, it is Smoothwall I am trying to install, not Smallwall.

Is there a way to create a boot diskette that hands over to the CD drive on initialisation?

I'm just reading the docs for Smoothwall and it describes a method of creating a boot diskette so I'm going to give that a whirl first.

OK, did that. It booted from floppy and at the appropriate point asked me to choose install method (cdrom or http.) Chose CDRom and then it says there is "No IDE CDROM found!" Back to square one. Bosh.

I checked that it was all plugged in etc.

Anyone any other ideas ? Ta.

::blink blinks::

Wow, now that's a real good mess... Perhaps your power supply is going out? Or the cables are not aging gracefully? Cant think of anything short of replacing the drive. Since cd drives are 10$ now should be pretty easy.

Does the bios detect the drive? Try setting the bios manually rather than to autodetect. You may also want to try it on the other ide channel (make sure you change the jumpers)

David & Caeda, thanks for input. I decided to use another machine (an IBM thang) for the firewall as there is no way I am going to start messin with with ide channels, jumpers etc (especially as it was recently workin'). Instead, I shall liberate a new (to me) CD drive on the basis that I've probably fried the one I have somehow and try again. I will get this 486 to work, it's such a fast machine that it is a real pity not to. As I now have a firewall almost set up, I'll nominate the 486 for a drop-in internet station for the kids.

Thanks
Ashley

Another option with Smoothwall is a network install. My Smoothwall computer won't boot from CD and the boot disks won't recognize the CDrom drive either.

I just turn on Apache on my Slackware box and dump the install files in there. Then, after booting, just point the setup program to your web server, and you don't need the CD at all. It's supposed to work with ftp also, but I've always just used Apache.

Phathead