I'm playing around with an old AMD K6-200 and I wanted to install slackware on it... I have the slack 9.1 cds, I just haven't gotten around to burning the 10.0 cds. Anyhow, I go to install it and I boot the bare.i kernel (the only one that will boot) and during the "uncompressing Linux" phase the computer reboots. Any ideas?

EDIT: After more testing, I have determined that this problem exists with whatever linux distro I use...

have you tried using the floppies? im assuming its rebooting while trying to install, not when its already installed.

<ignore>

That's the problem. As soon as the slackware install cd tries to boot, the system resets itself. As for a boot floppy, no; my other computer is a Mac... The problem isn't limited to just slackware either. I've tried disabling the internal cache (somewhere I heard that was a possible fix) but no go there.

As for posting lilo.conf, it's whatever's on the slackware cd. I even tried switching out with a PI 200 MHz I just happened to have on hand.

It loads vmlinuz1 and reboots either on loading initrd or uncompressing linux.

2 guesses (and that's really all they are)..... either a RAM problem or a PSU problem. RAM issues can show up as almost anything, including reboots. It sounds to me like that is the most likely culprit, but an underperforming power supply can cause reboots as well. If your 12v rail is low, then any time the system is trying to use 2 drives at the same time (like CD and HD) then it might be trying to pull more power than the PSU can dish out, and thus EVERYTHING on the system is starved for power and that usually causes a shutdown. It's less likely that this is the cause, but it sounds like you're running on a pretty old system, and old PSUs can have undervoltage issues like this.

slight

I'm going to run with the second option - I have tried multiple sets of RAM sticks to no avail. Unless, by some vast conspiracy, *all* my RAM has gone bad...

Razor, does it works with some other OS (DOS or Windows)? Do you have some kind of antivirus protection enable on the bios (I use to have a problem with this on an old bios)?

No A/V...
It will try to boot to Windows 95 (the old OS) but it crashes before it does that. At first, it said because it doesn't have a mouse, but the last time it got past the W95 startup screen but froze on C:\ on a blank screen.

I'm betting on a bad power supply. Such a shame too...old PSUs tend to be more reliable. But oh well.

OK, I just tried using two PSUs but to no avail...

As an update, I am using the gentoo rescue cd (just because I happen to have it) and I was able to boot aida, the hardware diagnostic utility. However, the rescue cd kernel would not boot, nor would Darik's Boot 'n' Nuke. (as with slackware, as with trustix server linux, etc...) Aida is a DOS based system. So DOS did work, but Linux will not boot.

Here's the basics on my system:

AMD K6-200 200MHz / 66 MHz
40mb RAM
3 gb HDD
2x 200W AT PSU

Hmm... what else do you need to know?

have you tried knoppix or a similar cd linux?

is it possible you can't install via cdrom?

perhaps the ide cables are to blame?

i dunno too much so pardon my ignorance.

if you can get a hold of another pc, try making an install sloppy and using those. :/

I don't think it's a cdrom issue, but I will attempt to boot PHLAK. The memtest runs have indicated no errors with 40M of RAM.

This is only a guess, but it may be worth a try. When you boot w/ the Slack installation cd, somewhere (I think it's when you have the option to set up the partition table) you get a warning about systems with 16 megs or less ram. Basically, it recommends that you set up the swap partition and activate it (I believe there's instructions for this along with the warning). It doesn't seem like it would be a problem since 40 > 16, but you never know. You've pretty much covered all your bases so far, so it may be worth a try.

I don't get a RAM warning but I was able to scrounge together some more sticks, bringing me up to 64 Mb of RAM. I'll try some of the memory cheats and stuff like that. Am I right in assuming this is probably not a BIOS problem? Can I transplant a BIOS chip from one mobo to another? I have an AMBIOS chip on another similar mobo (which won't boot for other reasons); if the problem is BIOS related I could try switching BIOSes.