LinuxQuestions.org - lilo or hardware problem?

I recently had a failed install of current and decided to go back to 13 but I have lost my ability to boot with lilo.

At first I was getting a "Loading Linux: EBDA is big" failure message then after a second reinstall I started getting the 99 errors from lilo.

I thought I'd pop another hard drive in from a working slack 13 box and set it up as hda to see if that would boot but the same thing, 99's written across the screen. This drive was booting fine in another box.

I've tried manually running lilo

Interestingly, with both hard drives, I am getting lilo messages that my video adapter is not recognised. This has never happend before.

Thinking that my slack 13 disk was bad I've just installed 12.2 after wiping my disk and repartitioning and I still can't get lilo to work.

I'm wondering if this may be a bios or mobo problem since the video adapter is now also not being recognised. Output from lilo -v3 follows and note that I can boot and use the installed system using hugesmp.s from the install disk.

Code:

LILO version 22.8, Copyright (C) 1992-1998 Werner Almesberger

Development beyond version 21 Copyright (C) 1999-2006 John Coffman

Released 19-Feb-2007 and compiled at 12:43:17 on Nov 29 2008.

Running Linux kernel 2.6.27.7-smp on i686



Warning: LBA32 addressing assumed

device-mapper major = 253

raid_setup returns offset = 00000000  ndisk = 0

 BIOS  VolumeID  Device

Reading boot sector from /dev/hda

pf_hard_disk_scan: ndevs=2

  0300  440F7330  /dev/hda

  0800  22E3A813  /dev/sda

Resolve invalid VolumeIDs

Resolve duplicate VolumeIDs

  0300  440F7330  /dev/hda

  0800  22E3A813  /dev/sda

device codes (user assigned pf) = 0

device codes (user assigned) = 0

device codes (BIOS assigned) = 0

Filling in '/dev/hda' = 0x80

Filling in '/dev/sda' = 0x81

device codes (canonical) = 3

Device 0x0300: BIOS drive 0x80, 16 heads, 65535 cylinders,

              63 sectors. Partition offset: 0 sectors.

Using Volume ID 440F7330 on bios 80

Device 0x0301: BIOS drive 0x80, 16 heads, 65535 cylinders,

              63 sectors. Partition offset: 63 sectors.

Using Volume ID 440F7330 on bios 80

Warning: Unable to determine video adapter in use in the present system.

Using BITMAP secondary loader

Calling map_insert_data

Secondary loader: 19 sectors (0x3800 dataend).

bios_boot = 0x80  bios_map = 0x80  map==boot = 0  map S/N: 440F7330

Mapping bitmap file /boot/slack.bmp

Device 0x0301: BIOS drive 0x80, 16 heads, 65535 cylinders,

              63 sectors. Partition offset: 63 sectors.

Using Volume ID 440F7330 on bios 80

width=640 height=480 planes=1 bits/plane=8

Warning: Video adapter does not support VESA BIOS extensions needed for

  display of 256 colors.  Boot loader will fall back to TEXT only operation.

Calling map_insert_file

Bitmap: 31 sectors.

BIOS data check will include auto-suppress check

image_menu_space = 16



Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-huge-smp-2.6.27.7-smp

Device 0x0301: BIOS drive 0x80, 16 heads, 65535 cylinders,

              63 sectors. Partition offset: 63 sectors.

Using Volume ID 440F7330 on bios 80

Setup length is 23 sectors.

Mapped 9236 sectors.

Added Linux *

    <dev=0xe0,hd=48,cyl=65,sct=66>

    "ro root=301  vt.default_utf8=0"



 BIOS  VolumeID  Device

  80    440F7330    0300

  81    22E3A813    0800

Writing boot sector.

/boot/boot.0300 exists - no boot sector backup copy made.

Map file size: 77312 bytes.

RAID device mask 0x0000

Failsafe check:  boot_dev_nr = 0x0300 0xffffffc0

map==boot = 0    map s/n = 440F7330

3 warnings were issued.