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View Full Version : [ubuntu] Install goes nowehere on old AMD system



BelowGrade
May 20th, 2008, 05:38 PM
I have verified the Md5SUM on my installation CD. (8.04 LTS Server). It works properly on my newish HP Athlon dual-core system. But the system I want to put it on is a 6 year old Athlon with IDE disks and an ATI 7500 video card.

On that system, the CD boots and I pick the language. Then I select "Install Ubuntu" from the menu. The screen goes black with a blinking cursor at the upper left.

When I add " priority=low BOOT_DEBUG=2" to the boot command line I get the following repeated three times:
[: 2--: bad number

I have tried "fb=false" and "DEBIAN_FRONTEND=text" to no avail. Clearly there is something about my hardware it doesn't like. But my old software, some ancient Gentoo, still boots fine on it.

BelowGrade
May 20th, 2008, 05:46 PM
I forgot to add that I do get the "Loading Kernel..." message. It is after that when the screen goes blank.

I found an old 7.10 desktop disk and that get farther, then complains about timeout waiting for DMA, and finally proceeds with a normal install. But I want the server config, not desktop, and the 8.04, not 7.10.

BelowGrade
May 20th, 2008, 06:45 PM
Pressing F4 during install to select "Install mode" gives me a menu with just one choice: "NORMAL".

gkforcare
October 4th, 2008, 10:15 PM
I'm in the same situation. It looks like ide is to slow somehow. It did work ok with Fedora Core 2 (old, yes, I know, not for nothing I want to install Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS ;-) )

I did try to use ide=nodma, but to no avail. I reaeaeally want to get this baby going with Ubuntu... Maybe I should download an old Ubuntu version? (and upgrade...)

wkr,
Gerke

gkforcare
October 4th, 2008, 11:27 PM
you know what did it in the end? It was a hardware 'failure' that was masked by the drive showing up in the BIOS with a very long delay but to slow for Ubuntu 8.04.1 and just fast enough for Fedora Core 2... Anyway, I fiddled with the master/slave jumper (good old times ;-) ) and now it's faster in startup and works in Ubuntu 8.04.1

wkr,
Gerke