Hi all,

I have recently acquired an old computer and thought that I might as well revive it with a Linux distribution rather than letting it go to waste. I've chosen Zenwalk because of its reputation of running extremely well on old hardware and its simple "one task, one application" approach. (Note: old hardware = Pentium II 333mhz in this case)
I downloaded the ISO, checked the md5 sum, and then burnt it to disc using Toast 6 Titanium. I booted the 98 system and checked that the CD had burnt correctly and was readable. All good so far. Restarted to edit the BIOS settings, changed the boot order to: CD-ROM, A: , C:.
Saved changes in the BIOS utility, which automatically restarted the system. I get standard boot prompts until "Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM: _". Then nothing happens. I have tried pressing return but the system refuses to load past this point.
I have googled extensively and come up with no solution thus far. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards, Martin.

check if you can boot with another live distro from a magazine or something(they always have a bunch on them) and then try to burn it again maybe from a different mirror and try using nero it's the best for windows

I tried using an Ubuntu Live CD, however the process stops at the same point. It just doesn't seem to want to boot anything from a CD.
The other computer I have runs Mac OS X, so Toast is the best burning tool available. If I had a spare Windows computer with a burner I'd give Nero a go. Trying an ISO from a different mirror is something I hadn't considered, but given that I have checked the md5 sum I'm not sure it would help. Also, the internet connection I have isn't terribly fast, and downloading the 410mb image consumes a good 4 hours of my time, not to mention another 410mb of my limited downloads per month.

Thanks for the help. I'll keep looking around for advice.

Cheers, Martin.

It doesn't sound like it's a problem with your CD burning software but more like a hardware thing. Have you tried if you can boot your Win 98 CD?

You should make sure that the CD-player is set as master and connected to the end of the second IDE cable.

If md5 is ok i think ISO is ok too.

it migth be a burning speed problem...

Heltreko: I'm figuring if I can read the file structure of the disc once Windows 98 loads, then there shouldn't be a problem there. I unfortunately don't have a Windows 98 CD on hand to try, but I should be able to get hold of one fairly easily. I haven't any experience in hardware things, so could you please explain further how to set the drive as master, and how I find which one is the second IDE cable, or point me in the direction of an adequate tutorial?

Guth: Could you please explain what you mean by a burning speed problem?

Thanks for the help. One step closer to solving this I think.

Cheers, Martin.

That's what tells you that the CD is readable but not bootable. That's why I suggested getting a Win98 CD or any other CD you know are bootable.

The thing is that "back in the days" when CD players where quite new you often had to boot from a floppy to get to install the OS (win95/98) because the player didn't support booting. If the CD player is that old you still could boot linux from a floppy, load the drives for the CD player and thereafter proceed with the install.

If you look at the motherboard you probably see that the IDE connectors are labelled. The primary is most often marked "IDE0". This cable almost certainly have the Win98 harddrive connected to the end of the cable (master). The secondary IDE bank is usually labelled IDE1.

Each drive (harddrive or CD player) has jumpers at the back where you can set "master", "slave" or "auto". In modern computers you can almost always have it at "auto" but since this is an old machine I figure someone can have moved the drives around, connected a drive jumped as "master" to the slave (middle connector) position of the IDE cable. This doesn't matter that much to Win98 but it can make it impossible to boot from the drive using BIOS.

I don't know of a tutorial but most of the time the drives has symbols at the top saying how to set the jumpers if you like it to be slave or master. If you Google for "master slave jumper settings" you get quite usefull information. Also look at the CD players manufacturers web for documentation.

Good Luck!

maybe you had burn the CD too fast for it (like a 20x CD burned at 24x).
Or maybe the CD reader in the box is reading well with CD burned on a low speed (8-12x for example).

Heltreko: I'll try to boot from a Win98 CD when I get a hold of one. I might be able to get one at my girlfriend's house today. I'll also check if her computer can boot the Zenwalk disc I've burnt to see if the issue is just the hardware.
I checked out the jumper settings for the hard drive and the CD drive (after a fair bit of Google) and have found that the hard drive is the master on the primary IDE cable, and the CD is the slave on the secondary cable. And I need to make the CD the master on the secondary cable?
I looked for a guide to making a Zenwalk boot floppy but couldn't find anything. Also, my Mac doesn't have a floppy drive, so I don't know how I'd go making one. :-p

Guth: I'll try burning the disc at a slower speed and see how that goes. Thanks.

If the Zenwalk disc runs at my girlfriend's place then I'll repost this in the Hardware forum. Thanks for all your help.

Regards, Martin.

Thats right!

Right again!

I don't think there's a Zenwalk boot floppy but after you've corrected the jumpers on the CD my guess is you'll be able to boot the CD. If not you can get a Slackware (or other distro) boot floppy which you can write in Win98 with RAWWRITE (it's DOS software). After booting any other linux OS you can install Zenwalk from the CD.