On Saturday 29 September 2001 08:12 pm, Jeff Reed wrote: > strange indeed...i've been trying to install deb 2.2, freebsd 4.3, and even > mandrake 8 on my pentium 3. as of late, it's been acting like a big piece > of junk. regardless of what distro i'm installing, it seems to halt at some > random interval in the process.
Check to see if your video card is compatible...I was using an ATI Rage 128 -- doesn't work under the current Debian. I also tried to install Red Hat 6.0, and Mandrake 7.2...none of these would fly. SuSE 6.4, however, DID work (SuSE folk had written some sort of drivers or whatever for their distribution, I was able to download XFree86 updates in RPM format from the Red Hat 6.1 distribution which had adopted the new SuSE video stuff). Anyway, now I am running Red Hat 7.1, and trying to figure out a way to install the latest Debian (Woody I guess) from here, with the ATI Rage 128 support. When I would go to install Debian (or anything else), the install would simply bomb inexplicably: it sounds similar to your problem. I *think* the install routines use something called a "curses" or "ncurses" library; and this provides a sort of a colorful or gray GUI, in text console mode (no X). However when scrolling through list choices, this is when the problem comes, leaving a black empty line across the screen, and the inability to reboot unless you power down the machine (sometimes you can hit the "reset" button). If your problem is like this, then check your video card; also make sure that you try to run the install without any other cards in the machine, except RAM and your video card (I couldn't figure out a way to run the install without it! ;-) And yes, will your machine run anything else, like Windows? (I HATE to ask this; I finally got rid of Windows for GOOD, and I would HATE to have to go back--for anything!) Good luck! --mVIIs
