Dell CPiA 366 XT boot problem solved?

[Davepet]

Hi, I finally got a hold of a fast enough connection (temporarily) to give this OS a try.

It booted right up o my brother's gateway PII 500Mhz desktop & his IBM thinkpad (P-III 850 mhz...sorry don't have any more specs).

When I got it home, it booted to my old Compaq 5204 (AMDK62- 350, 192 MB RAM, via chipset, ATI Mach 64 LT, ESS sound (sound didn't work)).
I had a problem with my Dell laptop CPiA 366 (PII-366, 128 MB ram, neomagic video & sound)..

Just in case it might help someone else, this string got it working:
linux26 knoppix noscsi nosmb atapicd acpi=off

I didn't go through a scientific process to get to this string, so some of it may be able to be eliminated, this is just the first string that resulted in a successful boot.

noscsi acpi=off by themselves didn't work (it would hang at detecting sda (something) I should have made notes, I guess

I'll add to this as (if) I find anything that might be helpful.

Dave

[PeterPoeliejoe]

Hi,
I've got the same machine, but succeeded in booting 3.4 by booting with kernel 2.4. After install to harddisk, you can choose kernel 2.6 anyway. This works fine. Dell CpiA seems to have a quite buggy BIOS, as far as ACPI is concerned. Flashing the BIOS should help something.

Peter

[Davepet]

Last I checked I have the latest bios on this machine. Dell even has special SW to install that keeps win98 from tying to use acpi with this machine (its a required install when flashing to the A15 (?) bios.)

Wasn't looking to do a HD install, only a 6GB HD & room is getting tight. Booting from CD &2.4 didn't work, but I didn't try passing anything beyond noscsi.

I'll play with the string when I get some time & see if I can shorten it.

Dave