Does anyone own a Shuttle SS40G (the spacewalker Mini-PC) and have a modern Linux distro running on it? If so, which one? I tried SuSE 8.1 and RedHat 8.0 with no luck. Redhat 8.0 manages to install, but won't boot. My LCD monitor says "signal out of range", which only happens when the screen is scrambled. SuSE crashes during LiveEval 8.1 install. I know the hardware is in working order because I've run Windows 2000 on it for 6 months without a crash or glitch. I would like to convert the machine into a Linux server.

Here's some relevant details from their website:
Mainboard: FS40 Small Form Factor
CPU: Socket A 266/200MHz MSB
Chipsets: North bridge:SIS 740 South bridge:SIS 961
Memory: DDR 266/200 * 2
VGA: SIS 315, 4-64 MB VGA share memory
Audio: C-Media 6 Ch. H/W

I am running 512MB ECC, a CD-ROM, a modern HD, an AthlonXP 2000. I have no peripherals installed.

Here is what I've found, a couple of sites recommended booting with option linux pci=bios. That didn't help with SuSE. A couple of posts mentioned debian, but since I am a novice with Linux, I was hoping for a more mainstream user-friendly distro, like RedHat or Mandrake. When I bought the computer, I tried installing Mandrake 8 and Redhat 7.3 and got a Signal 11 error. My guess it that it had something to do with the fact that the video memory is shared with the system RAM.

Has anyone successfully installed a modern distro on their SS40G? If so, please let me know the version. If you had to take any special steps, please let me know. This is getting frustrating. I want to run Linux, but it seems like I just keep trying to do these LONG installs and getting nowhere.

Thanks,
Steven

There is an article about installing RH8 on a Shuttle SB51G here that may be of some help.

...that computer uses a different mobo and proc. Mine is the first Athlon spacewalker. I actually have an update, though. I managed to get Redhat 8.0 to install, but it didn't recognize the LAN adapter, so the server is completely useless and I'm taking a break from it. I went to the Realtek website and all they had was a C file and makefile. I tried running make on the Makefile and got an error. Not being a C program or finding any easy guides to compiling drivers, I'll address it later. I'm almost tempted to buy a PCI lan card because the $15 for a cheap card might be worth less than the time I've invested in this project.

If anyone has a compiled driver they're willing to share or info on configuring the SS40G in Redhat 8.0 fter install, I'm all ears and very appreciative. Thanks for the link, bern.

I too had a problem with RedHat 8.0 on the SS40g, the secret is to specify a kernel parameter at boot time..

pci=bios,biosirq

There seems to be some problem with 2.4 level kernels scanning the PCI bus with some SIS chipsets. the kernel parameter solves this problem.

Also, when installing grub or lilo, don't forget to respecify the parameter...

Hope this helps

I am currently Running Lunar Linux On mine
to get the nic working try the 8139too driver it seems to work fine
i've had mandrake 9.2 beta 1 working as well as gentoo and debain..
so far i prefer lunar

i'd also reccomend this page
http://islay.dyndns.org/taz/

I'm running Xandros, I didn't have any problem loading it once I changed my HDD to Primary Master single. The big problem now is getting my network card to be detected. How to I do this?
Thanks Scott