First Linux install (Slackware), not off to a good start

Feminista · 02-02-2005, 10:57 PM

Well, I got an old 233 MHz Pentium MMX today (256 MB of RAM and a 7GB HDD though!), and I want to use it to play around with Slackware. However, it's not being polite about the install. You'll have to forgive my ignorance, I've been a mac user for many years, so I'm used to things being nice and polite to me.

My problem is that the computer doesn't want to boot from the CD OR from the boot floppy I made (using bare.i). When I boot from the floppy, the BIOS tells me that the boot failed, and when I set the boot order to boot from CD, it just boots from the hard drive anyway (mean ol' BIOS).

So, I assume that my problem is simple, and I just know nothing about non-mac machines.

Edit: Slackware 10, if it matters.

DavidPhillips · 02-02-2005, 11:22 PM

How did you burn the cd?

Feminista · 02-02-2005, 11:37 PM

Torrented the ISOs, burned them on a mac with Toast. I know the drive recognizes them because I can see all the files from within windows. I think it burned as ISO9660.

tormented_one · 02-02-2005, 11:56 PM

Is the cd-rom before the hd in the boot order?

Feminista · 02-03-2005, 12:05 AM

Yeah. My BIOS is a little weird, so it won't let me set it to CD, Floppy, Hardrive, but I've tried it with CD, Floppy, SCSI (boots from harddrive), and Floppy, Harddrive, SCSI (tries to boot from floppy and fails).

vimal · 02-03-2005, 01:36 AM

check whether your cd is a bootable one..

derekp · 02-03-2005, 03:59 AM

Just a thought : make sure you didn't just copy the iso to the cd - you have to "burn cd image"

Feminista · 02-03-2005, 09:41 AM

I did burn the ISO, I didn't burn a data CD with the ISO on it. Like I said, I can see the files within windows, so it should be burned correctly.

jens · 02-03-2005, 10:14 AM

Try the SBM floppy (always worked for me in those situations):
http://linux.simple.be/tools/sbm

After booting SBM, it will give you an option (in a graphical menu) to boot from your cdrom.

justin_p · 02-03-2005, 11:09 AM

Make sure any options in that Toast program that allows the Image to be bootable are checked. Check out this info http://www.lessnetworks.com/static/v...ISO9660CD.html

Have you burned ISOs before? Was this an issue?

darkRoom · 02-03-2005, 12:39 PM

Hi
Sometimes you have to press (any) key to boot from the cdrom (even if you enabled cdrom boot in bios). Other than that i can only presume yor media is bad, this does happen, i made an iso of debian the other week and it won't boot

Feminista · 02-03-2005, 09:57 PM

Well, I'll try the SBM when I can (need to get a NIC for the box in question, or create the disk on another box).

As for Toast, the newer versions are getting simpler and simpler interface-wise. I don't believe it's still necessary to check any "bootable" boxes (I looked around and didn't find any related options). I've burned several ISOs in the past, and they all worked fine, but none of them were intended to be bootable.

Thanks for the ideas, I'll get this to work yet!

Feminista · 02-04-2005, 07:35 PM

Well, turned out to just be a BIOS problem. It's all working now. Thanks for the ideas anyway.

Mods feel free to close the topic.