[Justbill]

I have gotten an Hp Pavilion 6630 machine from a friend of mine. It has a 500Mhz Celeron Processor, 64Mg SDRAM, and a 10GB hard drive.
The problem I am having is that I want to put FC4 or similar on this machine. Anytime I try to install anything "linux" , I at some point get an error that the installer can't find the media in the cdrom. I have tried FC4, FC3, CentOS4.1, Ubuntu, Mepis, DSL, Beatrix, and Puppy, and I get the same problem at some point in the install. I thought at first maybe the cdrom drive was faulty, but I have successfully installed Windows 98 SE, twice this evening,on this box. I am at a loss, as to what is causing this problem! Can anyone offer any thoughts on this. Thanks in advance for any help!

Justbill

[danleff]

Commercially burned software disks are made to run on most older cdrom disks. This is why the Windows 98 disk works on the system.

The older the cdrom, the less likely that home burned cd disks will boot correctly on the cdrom. Especially cdrw disks burned at too fast speed. CDRW disks do not work well on these older systems. I have tried several times on these old HP systems.

CD-R disks may work, but they must be of good quality, rated for the speed of the cdrom drive and be burned very slow, say 2X or 4X. If you still have problems, you can either buy a newer cdrom disk drive, or a commercially burned cd of your favorite distro. They can be had fairly cheap, say at Linux Central or your favorite site.

[Justbill]

Thanks for the idea on that danleff. I will probably get a new cdrom drive for that. I'm just wondering though, the win98 disc, is a burned copy, I don't know what speed it was burned at though.

Justbill

P.S. When I tried to install FC3, that was a publishers disc set (the discs came with a book on FC3), so they were not burned at home.
[Edited by Justbill on 2005-10-18 13:34:09]

[Mel]

64Mg isn't enough ram to install most distros.
Make sure your swap file is at least 500
to make up for the low RAM.That may help although
it will probably be a little slow.

Hi,Danleff. Finally got back on cable so I can start
DLing distros again.Now I can start playing with these
old boxes again and just maybe say something that will
help someone.
Phone lines just ain't made to DL distros.

[danleff]

You have a burned copy of Win 98? Don't tell Mr. Gates!

In these old HP systems, the drives are often funky. Too many variables...the ability of the drive to read CDRW vs. cd-r disks, how they were burned (speed and specs. - joliet vs....) and the quality of the media they were burned on.

In terms of cd's that come with a book or magazine...who knows what the issue is, damage (look on the underside of the cd disks), exposure to magnets, whatever.

Try the disks in another system, if possible and see what you get. If the book included cd's work, you know it's the cdrom drive. If the others work also, that's the problem.

Mel is right. I neglected to note the ram issue. Vector Linux may work. Puppy Linux may need 128 mg ram, as it runs totally in ram. Live cd versions are likely to be an issue, since they run completely in ram.

Mel eluded to dial-up issues, which are a problem. often the downloads on dial-up are unreliable when downloading iso images. You need to check the md5sum of the donloaded images before burning them to assure that you got a good download.

Maybe download them with an ftp manager like SmartFTP, that can resume interupted downloads.

That reminds me, I need to update my article on burning iso images.

[Justbill]

Thanks guys!

I bumped the ram up to 192mb. Stil, nothing would work. Now it gets weirder. I put a Mad Dog 4 in 1 Dominator in the Pavilion, that I had in a Vectra. With the BIOS set to boot from cdrom first, and nothing. Now when the machine booted into win98, win98 saw the Dominator, however, the BIOS did not! In set up, on IDE 2 master, it said none. When I put the originall cdrom back in, it saw it fine. I even "flashed" the Dominator, with the flash tool from Mad Dog website. Currently I am loading Ubuntu on the 10 GB hard drive from the Pavilion, in the Vectra (took the HD out of the Pavilion and put it in the Vectra), hopefully this will work. I may still try to get a cd rom and perhaps a burner for the Pavilion, but I hate to waste the money on it if the Pavilion wil only recognize the cd rom that it had in it originally. Maybe a Sony would be more compatible with this older machine. What do you think?

Thanks
Justbill

P.S. I don't think interupted downloads are an issue here, as I am on broadband, 3meg service. My average download speed is about 350 kb/sec.

[danleff]

Do the Linux cdrom disks that you are having trouble with boot in the Vectra? If so, you know that it is the fault of the cdrom drive in the older machine.

In terms of the Mad Dog 4 in 1 Dominator, my guess that the bios on the Pavilion is the problem, if you are sure that you jumpered and set the cable to the cdrom drive correctly.

Try setting the Dominator to master slave and the cable connection accordingly.

Sometimes a bios update will fix such issues, but be aware, that on these older Pavilions, some of the bios information is resident on the hard drive. There is a small hidden partition on the drive that holds some bios data, as well as the recovery data. Make sure that if you try any bios updates, that the original drive is in the Pavilion.

HP often uses legacy hardware, so this could be the source of your problem with the Dominator not being recognized in the bios.

But hopefully installing Ubuntu on the newer machine and putting it back in the Pavilion will work.

Also be aware, that grub or lilo will point to where the Ubuntu installation was on the Vector, relative to how you jumpered it on that system.

Since this drive is probably Primary master on the Pavilion, you will need to edit grub, if you jumpered it differently on the Vectra to do the installation.

To explain, if you put the drive in the Vectra as master slave, grub will look for the kernel at hdb, or (hd0,1). When you place it back into the pavilion as primary master, grub will need to be editied to hda, or (hd0,0).

Of course, if you put the pavilion's drive in as primary master in the Vectra to do the install, the above does not apply.

[Mel]

How big is the MadDog ?
Try formating a primary at about 30 gb then
format the rest as extended and divide the
extended partition into logical drives less
than 38gb.That pavilion can't handle anything larger
than 38 gigs.Most of the low end 40gig HDs have
a jumper to restrict them to 38gb so those old
HPs can read them.

[danleff]

Isn't the MadDog a cdrom or writer, not a hard drive?

[Mel]

You're right , Danleff.
Justbill mentioned the mad dog and a
hard drive and I got them confused.
Must be getting senile in my old age.

[Justbill]

Well, it looks like I've met with some success here! As I said earlier, I pulled (earlier it may have been I intend to pull) Maxtron hard drive out of the Pavilion, and put it in the Vectra. I did make sure to put it on the first IDE, and on master. I did successfully install Beatrix, and Vector SOHO 5.0 (at different times) to the drive (the Maxtron). My next attempt (going on as we speak), is to have a dual booting drive (OK I am nuts), win98 and Vector 5.1 . I went with Vector 5.1 because of its relatively small size. Vector is installing now, almost done as a matter of fact. It appears that the issue was probably the cdrom in the Pavilion, because I have been able to install systms on the Maxtron, with it in a different machine. Incidently, The Mad Dog is a Dominator 4 in 1 CD-RW DVDrom (it will burn cd's and read dvd's). I will check back tomorrow and let you all know how this fiasco went.

Thanks for all the help
Justbill

[Justbill]

OK, I am going to dis-able my sound so I can't hear the I "Told You So's"

Thanks for all the help guys! I ended up puting a new cd-rw dvdrom drive in, and all works great! I got a LiteOn cd-rw dvd rom, and stuck that in there and it has solved all my problems. My free computer is starting to run into a few bucks here Between the new cd-rw dvd rom , ethernet card, and 128MB of ram, free aint looking quite as cheap as it did at first. O well, it will make a nice little box for playing around on..... It is a

HP Pavilion 6630
500 MHz Celeron processor
192MB SDRAM
10GB Maxtron hard drive

dual booting

Win 98 & Vector SOHO 5.0

Thanks for all the help guys
Justbill

[drGspot]

simillar problems with my friends pavilion 6630. Seeral liveCD- distros brake-up on boot or booted only in rescue shell/or twm gui(dyne:bolic 1.4; Ubuntu; slix 1.0, 2.0.x.x., slax, knoppix 3.2; 3.4, ...)
It seem that this machine has some form of closed firmware protection & suspect that CD-ROM is not strictli ATAPI compliant.
I will probably make multiboot of:

w98 s.e./t.e.[oem] 4x 2GB partit hda1_5_6_7
Centos 4 when i get it
Mandrake 9.1 HP + windowmaker
ok /swap 500MB
[maybe redHat 6.2/7.0 ? -- but no room]

Amiga & linux rULeZ

linuxWorkshop "skillExchange"
http://tamtam.mi2.hr/razmjenavjestina/

[danleff]

Most likely related to the age of the cdrom drives in these systems and their ability, or inability, to boot off of cdrom disks burned with newer cdrw drives (home burned). In addition to that, the type of media used. These old cdrom drives have particular problems with cdrw media versus cd-r media. If using cd-r media, they work best with slow rated disks. I recently had this problem working on an older HP system trying to use my rescue disks that were rated at 52X. I actually switched to 4X rewritable media and that worked.