[SOLVED (sort-of)] LXDE 2010.10 LiveCD failed to boot old HP

[clb62]

Greetings, new PCLOS user here.

I'm trying to get a couple of old computers (re)usable for an inner-city school.  I have used several flavors of Linux in vbox on my laptop to get a feel for what might be best, and settled on LXDE as a desirable lightweight setup (vs Lupu, Macpup, Antix).  I did some searching through the LiveCD topic on the forum site, but could not find anything similar to my issue.

I am going to try the 2nd computer (a Dell Dimension later today), but wanted to get something posted for the HP Pavilion 8770c AMD Athlon 850 (circa 1999-2000).  My initial investigations of Linux led me to Mepis (which I have an older version installed on this HP).  But it is slow to boot and feels a little sluggish, hoping PCLOS LXDE makes things snappier and easier to setup, configure, support, etc.

The LXDE iso was downloaded and installed fine in my vbox.  I validated the checksum, burned, and then booted the LiveCD with/in my Dell Precision M4400 laptop, with no problems.  I've tried several boot options on both the CD-RW and DVD-CD/R drives in the HP.  Most give a blank screen after initial loading, but I did get some more detailed info from Safe Mode, including some more details on the HP boot process....

Code:

 HP Pavilion
  PhoneixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0.G
  Copyright 1999-2000 by Hewlett Packard, Inc.
  Release 1.04

  CPU = AMD Athlon 850
  384M of RAM
  UMB upper limit segment address: E94B
  Fixed Disk 0: Maxgtor 94610U6
  ATAPI CD-ROM: CR-4804TE
  ATAPI CD-ROM: Pioneer DVD-ROM ATAPIModel DVD-115  0111

Trying to boot from the CR-4804TE... an HP CD-Writer
 is the same results as the following, just takes longer to get to the LiveCD option screen

Trying to boot from the DVD... the Pioneer
 Boots faster, and gets furthest with Safe Mode with "No ACPI"

Code:

 Loading vmlinuz....
  <Loading initrd.gz>
  Decompressing Linux... Parsing ELF... done......
  Booting the kernel..............................
  ................................................ready.
  Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)... ok

The "Loading initrd.gz" is in <>'s because once it completes and the "Probing EDD" line prints out, the cursor goes back to the "Loading initrd.gz" line and overwrites the text starting from the "Decompressing Linux" to the "Booting the kernel" on the next line.  Then the system hangs.  I believe I have tried all of the, is it, F6 options in safe mode to no avail.

The video is Vanta 16MB AGP.

I know that PCLOS uses the BFS kernel, correct?  I was wondering if there is an issue with running that kernel build on this vintage Athlon 850?  The Dell Dimension desktop I will be trying has a Pentium III.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

[clb62]

Folks,

An update... I had a little more success with getting into Live mode with the Dell, but struggled with getting it installed.  So, I've reverted to another distro that is i386-based with a 2.6.32 kernel.  Got both machines installed today.

Really wanted to use PCLOS-LXDE, but also did not want to exert a lot of effort at this point.  I did just notice that the download sites indicate the following....

        Processor
        Modern Intel or AMD processor.

So, I'm not sure what Modern means.

I'll definitely be back here if I need to rejuvenate any "newer" machines in the future.  And it will remain in my vbox for tinkering and keeping up with future releases.

Thanks to those who read my post.

[Hootiegibbon]

clb62,

I think more details is needed about those two machines, as I have easily installed a version of PCLinuxOS on hardware that is lower spec'd than the ones you mention with the .bfs kernel.

Due to the age of the machines you would probably have to use the one or more of the following bootcodes

ide-nodma noscsi nosmp noacpi acpi=off  noapm apm=off 3

Could you post further info regarding the processor speed, ram and other detail.

Thanks

Jase 

 

 

[clb62]

jase,

I queried for some Linux CLI commands that may be helpful.  For the HP Pav 8770 that will not boot the kernel, I got the following results from booting another LiveCD I have, and yes the drive shows partitioning from a previous Linux install.

Code:

$ sudo dmidecode -t system
# dmidecode 2.9
# No SMBIOS nor DMI entry point found, sorry.

and then (sorry so long)

Code:

$ lshw
"the HP pavilion 8770"  [b]<-- my edit[/b]
    description: Computer
    width: 32 bits
  *-core
       description: Motherboard
       physical id: 0
     *-memory
          description: System memory
          physical id: 0
          size: 370MiB
     *-cpu
          product: AMD Athlon(tm) Processor
          vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
          physical id: 1
          bus info: cpu@0
          version: 6.2.1
          size: 850MHz
          width: 32 bits
          capabilities: fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow up
        *-cache:0
             description: L1 cache
             physical id: 0
             size: 128KiB
        *-cache:1
             description: L2 cache
             physical id: 1
             size: 512KiB
     *-pci
          description: Host bridge
          product: AMD-751 [Irongate] System Controller
          vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
          physical id: 100
          bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0
          version: 25
          width: 32 bits
          clock: 33MHz
          configuration: driver=agpgart-amdk7 latency=32
          resources: irq:0 memory:f8000000-fbffffff(prefetchable) memory:f4001000-f4001fff(prefetchable) ioport:1c80(size=4)
        *-pci
             description: PCI bridge
             product: AMD-751 [Irongate] AGP Bridge
             vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
             physical id: 1
             bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
             version: 01
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 66MHz
             capabilities: pci bus_master
             resources: memory:f5000000-f5ffffff memory:fc000000-fdffffff(prefetchable)
           *-display UNCLAIMED
                description: VGA compatible controller
                product: NV6 [Vanta/Vanta LT]
                vendor: nVidia Corporation
                physical id: 5
                bus info: pci@0000:01:05.0
                version: 15
                width: 32 bits
                clock: 66MHz
                capabilities: pm agp agp-2.0 cap_list
                configuration: latency=40 maxlatency=1 mingnt=5
                resources: memory:f5000000-f5ffffff memory:fc000000-fdffffff(prefetchable)
        *-isa
             description: ISA bridge
             product: VT82C686 [Apollo Super South]
             vendor: VIA Technologies, Inc.
             physical id: 4
             bus info: pci@0000:00:04.0
             version: 22
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: isa bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=parport_pc latency=0
             resources: irq:0
        *-ide
             description: IDE interface
             product: VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE
             vendor: VIA Technologies, Inc.
             physical id: 4.1
             bus info: pci@0000:00:04.1
             logical name: scsi0
             logical name: scsi1
             version: 10
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: ide pm bus_master cap_list emulated
             configuration: driver=pata_via latency=32
             resources: irq:0 ioport:1f0(size=8) ioport:3f6 ioport:170(size=8) ioport:376 ioport:1c60(size=16)
           *-disk
                description: ATA Disk
                product: Maxtor 94610U6
                vendor: Maxtor
                physical id: 0
                bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
                logical name: /dev/sda
                version: BAC5
                serial: N6038AWC
                size: 42GiB (46GB)
                capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
                configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=1b9c1b9b
              *-volume:0
                   description: EXT3 volume
                   vendor: Linux
                   physical id: 1
                   bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,1
                   logical name: /dev/sda1
                   logical name: /
                   version: 1.0
                   serial: f7e03513-268f-49e1-99ba-5f8532ef24fe
                   size: 41GiB
                   capacity: 41GiB
                   capabilities: primary bootable journaled extended_attributes large_files recover ext3 ext2 initialized
                   configuration: created=2010-12-08 16:32:21 filesystem=ext3 modified=2010-12-08 17:19:42 mount.fstype=ext3 mount.options=rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered mounted=2011-01-09 15:41:23 state=mounted
              *-volume:1
                   description: Extended partition
                   physical id: 2
                   bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,2
                   logical name: /dev/sda2
                   size: 1019MiB
                   capacity: 1019MiB
                   capabilities: primary extended partitioned partitioned:extended
                 *-logicalvolume
                      description: Linux swap / Solaris partition
                      physical id: 5
                      logical name: /dev/sda5
                      capacity: 1019MiB
                      capabilities: nofs
           *-cdrom:0
                description: CD-R/CD-RW writer
                product: CR-4804TE
                vendor: MITSUMI
                physical id: 1
                bus info: scsi@1:0.0.0
                logical name: /dev/cdrom1
                logical name: /dev/cdrw1
                logical name: /dev/scd0
                logical name: /dev/sr0
                version: 2.4C
                serial: [MITSUMI CR-4804TE       2.4C
                capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw
                configuration: ansiversion=5 status=nodisc
           *-cdrom:1
                description: DVD reader
                product: DVD-ROM DVD-115
                vendor: PIONEER
                physical id: 0.1.0
                bus info: scsi@1:0.1.0
                logical name: /dev/cdrom
                logical name: /dev/dvd
                logical name: /dev/scd1
                logical name: /dev/sr1
                version: 1.11
                capabilities: removable audio dvd
                configuration: ansiversion=5 status=nodisc
        *-usb:0
             description: USB Controller
             product: VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
             vendor: VIA Technologies, Inc.
             physical id: 4.2
             bus info: pci@0000:00:04.2
             version: 10
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=uhci_hcd latency=32
             resources: irq:9 ioport:1c40(size=32)
        *-usb:1
             description: USB Controller
             product: VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
             vendor: VIA Technologies, Inc.
             physical id: 4.3
             bus info: pci@0000:00:04.3
             version: 10
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=uhci_hcd latency=32
             resources: irq:9 ioport:fce0(size=32)
        *-serial UNCLAIMED
             description: SMBus
             product: VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI]
             vendor: VIA Technologies, Inc.
             physical id: 4.4
             bus info: pci@0000:00:04.4
             version: 30
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pm cap_list
             configuration: latency=0
        *-multimedia:0
             description: Multimedia audio controller
             product: ES1371 [AudioPCI-97]
             vendor: Ensoniq
             physical id: e
             bus info: pci@0000:00:0e.0
             version: 06
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=ENS1371 latency=96 maxlatency=128 mingnt=12
             resources: irq:10 ioport:1c00(size=64)
        *-network
             description: Ethernet interface
             product: SMC2-1211TX
             vendor: Accton Technology Corporation
             physical id: f
             bus info: pci@0000:00:0f.0
             logical name: eth0
             version: 10
             serial: 00:10:b5:4c:55:c1
             size: 100MB/s
             capacity: 100MB/s
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
             configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=8139too driverversion=0.9.28 duplex=full ip=192.168.1.106 latency=32 link=yes maxlatency=64 mingnt=32 multicast=yes port=MII speed=100MB/s
             resources: irq:5 ioport:1000(size=256) memory:f4000000-f40000ff
        *-multimedia:1 UNCLAIMED
             description: Multimedia controller
             product: V90 WildWire Modem
             vendor: Agere Systems
             physical id: 11
             bus info: pci@0000:00:11.0
             version: 01
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pm cap_list
             configuration: latency=32 maxlatency=14 mingnt=252
             resources: ioport:1c98(size=8) ioport:1800(size=256) ioport:1c90(size=8) ioport:1c88(size=8) ioport:1400(size=256) ioport:1c70(size=16)

I'll try to boot with some of the codes you've suggested and what I found at Knoppix wiki.

Thanks!

Updated --> tried several SafeMode boots with different combos of boot codes, including setting them all, boot screen looks the same as 1st post, freezes at 'Booting the kernel'.