[GTALUG] Unbootability

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 10:20:17AM -0400, Peter King wrote:
> Thanks for all the suggestions.  Here's what I've found out so far.
> 
> First, the computer simply won't boot with only RAM/videocard/CDR drive;
> it keeps saying there is a bootdisk error (presumably because there are
> no discs attached).
> 
> Second, I finally located some jumpers, and have checked all the settings
> on the two hard drives and the CDRW drive; they all show up correctly in
> the BIOS POST screen, so that seems fine.
> 
> Third, I tried to swap out the video card -- you never know -- only to
> find that I don't have a spare PCIe video card to put in its place, and
> the video cards I do have aren't PCI.  But one good thing came of that.
> When I put the video card back in and reseated everything, then, for one
> brief shining moment, the Gentoo install disc booted all the way up into
> the framebuffer (hi Tux!) until freezing at the "loading drivers etc. into
> memory" message.  An immediate cold reboot, however, did not get as far as
> the framebuffer, That makes it likely that some piece of hardware is just
> flaky.  Probably not the CDR drive, since I've had the same behaviour out
> of two drives and three cables.  So now I'm guessing either the video card
> itself, the motherboard, or the power supply.
> 
> Fourth, tried Knoppix, and, like SysRescueCD, it fails to load with the
> message that the data is corrupt.  Odd, since, like SysRescue, it boots
> just fine on other equipment.
> 
> 
> From here I could try to run down a Really Old install disc, to see what
> happens.  Or haunt a few electronics stores to find an old video card to
> swap out the current one.  As for a longer shot, see if there is a BIOS
> upgrade in case there is some deep problem there.  But most likely what
> I'll do is stick one of the hard drives in another computer, install a
> distro there, and see if the $@#!% computer will boot from a regular if
> lightweight linux on its master hard drive.
> 
> (At some point this will no longer be fun. But not yet.)

Sounds like either your power supply or mainboard has some voltage
issues then.  Or you could have a bad IDE cable top the CD drive.
Or a bad CD drive.

-- 
Len Sorensen