Old BIOS not recognising linux

vinref · 07-17-2002, 07:54 PM

I loaded a minimal Mandrake 8.2 onto an old Conner Peripherals 850MB hd using one machine with more RAM and put it into an old NCR PC (486/33Mhz) with an old BIOs and 8MB RAM. Now the NCR machine cannot read the MBR. Is there a way to manually load the linux loader into a specified place in the hd so that it will be recognised by the BIOS?

da Perp · 07-18-2002, 07:50 AM

call me crazy for suggesting this, but HOW ABOUT A BOOT FLOPPY DISK?!?!?!?!

progster · 07-18-2002, 08:03 AM

I have the same problem and no floppy drive

, any other solutions? or should I just buy the 10€ floppy drive?

~Progster

Mik · 07-18-2002, 10:21 AM

Is it really that it can't read the mbr or is it that it won't load the kernel. Mandrake has been using a default of i586 kernel for a while, which definetly won't work on a 486. You might have to rebuild your kernel. I don't know if they optimized any other programs but you might be better off trying a distribution which is built for your hardware to start off with.

jglen490 · 07-18-2002, 03:04 PM

The 486 machine's BIOS is probably suffering from the 540MB limit problem. If you can get a new BIOS (MrBios, or one of those companies), then you may be able to get around your problem. However, you may then run into the 586-optimization problem.

Both problems can very likely be resolved, but is it worth the time and effort.

vinref · 07-18-2002, 05:00 PM

Thanks for the excellent sggestions. I have been booting from a floppy and the Mandrake 8.2 seems to work fine in command line. This machine is old I know, but I use it to learn linux.