[techtalk] Help with setting up a Linux box

[Akkana]

Michelle Dukich writes:
> My office gave me an
> old HP Vectra VL (P2 at 233mHz, 64mb ram) which allegedly booted under NT.  

That model (Vectra VL 233) was a very popular Linux box for years
where I work -- most of the hardware is pretty vanilla and well
supported.  It should be a fine linux box if you can manage to
get past the current weird problem.  I ran one for quite a while
with an older Redhat (5.2 or 5.3).

> The cd drive (Pioneer dr-a24x) is not bootable so I created a RH7.1 install floppy,
> popped it in and booted.  Linux boots, sees the hard disc and the cd rom, prints "running
> install" then hangs at /sbin/loader.  
> 
> Being a perl gal, TMOWTDI, so I dug up a Mandrake 7.2 set I had around, created a boot
> disc and tried again.  This time it gets to second stage install, and hangs while it says
> "initializing cd rom". 

Any chance you could borrow a CDROM drive from another machine and
put it in the Vectra to see if there's something weird about it
which is causing problems with Linux?  It might also be worth
moving the CD around if it's a 2-channel IDE card, e.g. if it's
slave on the first channel, move it to master on the second, or
vice versa.  Maybe the Linux driver is getting confused by a
cabling or IDE problem ...  Does it actually boot NT now?
You said it "allegedly booted", and if it isn't bootable now,
I have to wonder whether perhaps it was retired because it was
having a hardware problem of some sort.

	...Akkana