Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (8,1)
i just got this old computer for free and wanted to put linux on it to see if i could make it at all usefull. its a compaq presario 7478 (realy Old). it wont boot from a cd. i reflashed the bios in hopes of gaining that option and it still wouldn't. so i took the hard drive, put it in an external case and hooked it up to my laptop. i found a cool little live cd (overclockix) with an installer script, so i put the whole thing on the HD that way. when i put it back into its own box and started it up i got a kernel panac with this error.
VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,1)
it also said to append a correct "root=" boot option.
this might make a little sense to me if it had grub as a bootloader but supposedly it has lilo. as far as i know only grub uses the (#,#) designations for drive locations. also lilo doesn't even realy show up. i have it set for a 3 second delay but it just says "lilo (version) _" and waits a couple seconds then boots. no input options or anything.
i looked at the lilo.conf and changed all the "sda" stuff to "hda". i set it up as sda since it was on my laptop. that didn't help. i'm not sure what else to do and im tired, so im going to bed.
i think i should be able to change the (8,1) to a (1,0) somewhere and fix everything. but what do i change and am i correct?
help would be much appreciated. my next step is to try installing suse.
also is there a way to boot from a floppy and make the floppy boot from a cd?
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