I can't install slackware 10.2 on an old IBM Thinkpad 380 ED. I followed the instruction based on this url: http://home.comcast.net/~fbui/Linux-on-TP380ED.html. I followed the instructions which was to create bootdisks made out of install.1 and install.2. After formatting and creating the bootdisks using the dd command, when I fire them up to the laptop, it won't boot and I only see a blank screen.

So I tried to set it up directly booting from the slack CD but to no avail. The commands such as SETUP is missing as well as other commands whenever I boot from the install cd. Here is what i got from /sys:

EXT2-fs error (device ramdisk(1,0)): ext2_check_page: bad entry in directory #511: rec_len is smaller than minimal - offset=0, inode=0, rec_len=0, name_len=0 l: No such file or directory.

Can anyone tell me what that means and what can I do to resolve such problem?

Tell us how much physical RAM the laptop has and how big the hard drive is.

Dennisk

stock ram is 32mb. Hard drive is 3.0GB

Slackware should be perfectly at home with this. Just out of curiosity: when you said that you can't boot from cd, is that a burnt cd or a pressed on (i.e. one that was purchased)? I've had some older systems that would not boot from a burnt cd, and had to resort to the floppy boot process...

I personally would attempt to remake the floppy images. I've had some problems occasionally with a bad dd or rawrite (dos command utility doing the same thing) and getting stuck either in the boot process or the ramdisk part.

You may want to look into changing the image you put onto the boot disk also, a lowmem version might work better.

Hope that helps.

It's a burnt cd my friend.

Btw, thanks for the help. I got it. I used the ibmmca.s image for booting and then used the imagedisks install.1 and install.2. Thanks for everything.

No problem. Glad to help a fellow slacker.