View Single Post
  #1  
Old January 18th 04, 07:20 PM
beldar
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Proliant 1500 + Linux = grief > many questions

Proliant 1500R dual ppro200, 512ram, 5x4.3gb, Matrox MGA 2064 8meg video

I've built it using SmartStart 4.70 that came with the box. An install
of MDK 9.0 resulted in the slowest box on this planet. Fully 9 minutes
for KDE to load! Good Gawd! Wiped the whole thing, including ROM,
clean and restarted the rebuild. Got to the point where I'm attempting
to install the OS and stuff gets interesting.
1. It seems that setting the OS in smartstart to UnixWare/Linux results
in blksize=512kb. Would this be a problem? Isn't blksize normally set
to 1024kb?
2. Somehow in the course of the restarts I've managed to fry processor
#2. This is a first for me in 10 years of farting around with boxen of
various sorts. Could it be the VRM that has been toasted? Would the
BIOS inform that it was the VRM or not during the post? Do I need a
processor of the same steppnig level as a replacement?
3. During install of MDk9, I'm looking at the kernel messages and see
an error indicating using RAMDISK is impossible due to low memory. The
kernel is seeing only 16mb despite 512M being detected and initialized
by the Compaq bios. Passing kernel messages such as expert mem=512M, or
linux mem=512M results in a kernel panic where no root fs is found on
01:03 which I don't think is the cdrom.

Much confusion here. Any help or pointers appreciated.