Old Gateway 500s wont boot linux

[heyhowdy]

well this is my first post so here goes. I recently got my hands on an older desktop. The desktop has windows xp preinstalled on it so as any trusty Linux user would i went straight to install linux on it. Long story short none of the distros i tried would install on the desktop i think its the bios (BF86510A.15A)the computer is a gateway 500s 510 with a pentinium 4 processer. Sorry i dont know what else to include. Thanks for your help!

[lkraemer]

Will any of the Distro's you tried run fine when you boot from LiveCD
without installing?

I'm sure Tiny Core, Slitzaz, and Puppy will boot and run on just about
anything. You can also try Antix M11.

How much RAM do you have in the Desktop? What Video Card is in the Computer?

Distros Ranked by order.

REF:
http://distrowatch.com

lk

[sidzen]

Are these your specs

Standard Memory 512 MB (removable)
Maximum Memory 4.0 GB
Memory Expansion 4 sockets
Memory Comments PC2700/3200 DDR SDRAM DIMMs. Supports Dual Channel DDR.
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4
Model Comments 800MHz FSB, Intel 865G Chipset

if so, getting at least more RAM and making sure yours is a good hard drive are the first priorities.
Start with a clean hard drive -- either new one or wipe the old one with zeros -- and one gig RAM.

You should have no problems after this . . .
it's not a bad machine!
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DIY
http://support.gateway.com/s/Manuals/Desktops/310/9524975.pdf
http://support.gateway.com/support/supinfo/index.asp?pg=2&file=510series.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_5924267_gateway-motherboard-number.html

[heyhowdy]

yes im pretty sure those are the specs it has two hard drives installed one 111 gig and one 3 gig (i think). I get a black screen every time i try and boot the machine and then alot of white text comes down but its not a boot sequence. (sometimes the live disks boot but very slowly and dont run well. I managed to install 9.10 on the smaller hard drive but that wont load anymore after i updated it. also i tried installing that again but it wouldn't install. im going to try again later ill see if i can post some of the readout that drops down if its of any use.