TinyME Acorn Alpha 3

[lkraemer]

I tried the gz ISO of TinyME Acorn Alpha 3 on my Compaq Presario 1672, AMD K6-2 350 MHZ, with
192 Meg of RAM, Pre-2000 BIOS.  It DIsplayed the Untiy Linux Color display and locked up.
My CDROM Drive made some funny sounds like water bubbling, with no spinning.  I tried APCI=off,
noapci, splash=verbose, and a few other cheatcodes.  No text scrolled from Verbose mode.

Then I tried it on a HP ze4315us, Athlon Sempron 1800, with 1 Gig RAM.  It booted to the
running display, but the Synaptics Touchpad did not work.  I didn't have a mouse readily
available to do any other playing.

I did boot the CDR and VERIFIED the Media and it said it was OK to install from the cdr.

The previous Version of TinyME Acorn booted fine on my 1672.  I ran it until I got fed up with
the lower toolbars disappearing, and then installed Crunchbang 8.04.2.  I also booted
Crunchbang 8.04.2 and also Puppy 4.3.1.  They both worked good on the Compaq 1672.

lkraemer  

[KDulcimer]

Could you try one more cheatcode on the 1672? Try 'debug'. You'll want to set splash=verbose as well.

[lkraemer]

OK, I tried the first three boot selections, along with noapm debug splash=verbose

I get the first two text lines:
Loading vzlinuz.................
loading initrd.gz.....................
then my CDROM drive just gives a light clicking sound and the screen blanks.  At that point it hangs.

lk

[KDulcimer]

Did you try running the media verification on the 1672?

[lkraemer]

Post#1, Third Paragraph states, "I did boot the CDR and VERIFIED the Media and it said it was OK to install from the cdr."

Yep, I tried that already, plus booting that same CDR on another computer.

It never locates the CDR after  the initial loading vmliniz.......................
text messages.

lk

[gettinther]

Sorry,  it seems your system is not able to use the newer isolinux.  You are failing at decompressing the initrd (which is a standard gzip compression).

Newer Isolinux seems to have issues with some older machines

http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/ISOLINUX

Quote: What to do when nothing works...

Unfortunately, in what seems to be par for the course when dealing with contemporary BIOSes, there are still a fair number of (mostly older) systems on which ISOLINUX simply will not work. On those systems, you may want to try Smart BootManager, a boot floppy which contains a standalone El Torito stack.

I hope this helps.

[lkraemer]

gettinther,
I had a floppy built of SBM and I tried using that to boot directly from the DVD/CD Drive.
I used cheat codes of noapm debug splash=verbose

Still no boot....  I had previously purchased Bootit NG and I have built a Floppy to give
it a test, but it most likely won't work either, although I have used it to boot straight
from a 256 USB Memory Stick.

So I guess there is no way I can ever use/test TinyME Acorn.  It's funny that CrunchBang
boots and works so good while others won't boot.  It's beyond me what is going on!

Thanks.

lkraemer

[Xeroliun]

TinyME is by far the best small Linux distro, I have tried several of them, good work!

My only issue is the touch pad issue noted above. It does not work on my Dell Latitude c610 / PIII 1GHZ / 256 RAM.

Other than that, very impressive.

X.

[KDulcimer]

I will ensure the next release of TinyMe has Synaptics installed. That should cure the touchpad issue.