Quote Originally Posted by ayeyen
Hello! I'm here because Damn Small Linux won't boot on my machine.
(And their forums won't sign me up)

Here's what happens:

(I have a 486 running Win95. Trashware indeed.)

I can't boot from CD so I use a boot floppy.

In DOS, even before linux loads, I get
Floppy disk(s) fail (40)

So I hit F1. And it continues into a nice picture of Tux.

I'm using
boot:dsl vga=normal
to avoid "You passed an undefined mode number"

Anyhow, it outputs the following:

loading vmlinuz..................
loading miniroot.gz..................
Ready.
Uncompressing Linux...Ok, booting the kernel
(pause)
hdb:error waiting for DMA

And it repeats the last phrase every minute or so.

What am I doing wrong??

Thanks!
I agree with OErjan,

try the following on your boot: prompt:
Code:
boot: dsl vga=normal nodma
Hope this helps,
Ms. Cuddles