On Thu, Jul 05, 2007 at 05:27:19 +1000, Amos Shapira wrote:
> I've finally got my Dell Dimension E520 desktop (don't trust the delivery
> company they use, stood me up three times in two days) and managed to boot
> System Rescue CD to shrink the Windows XP partition on it, but sticking the
> ia64 CD-ROM 1 or ia64 netinst of Debian Etch on memory stick causes it to
> just sit without doing anything as soon as the POST checks are over. It
> doesn't beep or print an error.
According to Dell's website, this model has an Intel 965 chipset. I had
trouble installing Ubuntu (Edgy, the latest at the time) on a PC with a
965 chipset because the Linux PATA driver didn't like the PATA controller.
The generic ide driver would work, but only if compiled into the kernel,
because it needed a command line option which was ignored if the driver
was built as a module.
The only CD I could boot was GRML. I tried Ubuntu (Edgy, Dapper), Knoppix,
Debian (3.1 IIRC), but none worked. I couldn't do a netinstall either
because the e1000 driver in the kernel wouldn't work with the new version
of the e1000 on my motherboard.
I had to build a custom installation CD with the generic ide driver compiled
into the kernel, and the e1000 driver replaced with the latest from sf.net.
The first kernel update from Ubuntu included these fixes, and IIRC, Ubuntu
Feisty boots OK on that machine.
So, try GRML (grml.org, I used v0.8) or Ubuntu Feisty, maybe that'll get you
going.
Cheers,
John
--
"Zero Administration" is analagous to "Maintenance-free Battery." When
administration is needed, you have zero chance of being able to do it.
-- Paul Sawyer
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
