I installed slackware 9.1 yesterday on my Dell Inspiron 8600. When I tried to boot it stopped at the line:

cs:IO port probe 0x0800-0x08ff

and never said it was clean. It looks like a PCMCIA problem so I disabled my 2 NICs in device manager in windows, but still no luck. Here is the line at the bottom again and 3 lines above it:

Socket status 30000086
cardmgr[56]: watching 1 socket
cs:IO port probe 0x0c00-0x0cff clean
cs:IO port probe 0x0800-0x08ff

Let me know if you want me to write down some more lines from the boot process. Thanks in advance...

Edit: Tried disabling onboard wireless and ethernet in BIOS, no luck.

Look here
http://holbrooks.org/linux/delli8k/

Cheers,
Tink

p.s.: You're not the sharpie I know from
descent, are you? :)

Na, I'm not that sharpie.

Thanks a bunch for the link.