WTF?! NO floppy in Lucid or in Meerkat! -- PROGRESS REPORT

[Basil Chupin]

On 27/09/2010 15:58, Christopher Chan wrote:
>    
>> I am happy from the point of view that not only do I have this floppy
>> drive problem solved (thanks to NoOp) but I was also able to flash the
>> BIOS on that infernal @#$%&^#!! ASUS motherboard.
>>
>> But that's as far as my happiness goes because I cannot get that
>> @#$%&^#!! A7N8X 'Dee-lucks' ASUS motherboard to work as it should!
>>
>> But this belongs in the other thread where I will report on the bitch
>> "real soon now".
>>      
> Have you tried noapic and apci=off kernel parameters?
>    

I have 10.04.1 on a flash drive - it boots perfectly.

I can boot and run live CDs of PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu 10.04.1 and Maverick - 
provided that there is *no* *HD* in the system.

As soon as I plugin an HD[1] in the system......every one of the above 
freeze during the initial stages of actually running (ie, they will boot 
but will freeze up before one reaches anywhere close to the login menu).

Oh, what the heck, I was going to report on this in the other thread but 
I'll mention it here and get it over and done with :-) .

I have an AMD Athlon XP 3200+. The best I can do on this @#$%&^#!! A7N8X 
'Dee-lucks' ASUS motherboard is to have the CPU recognised as an XP 
2500+ and only because I have the CPU frequency set to 166Mhz (with the 
Athlon having a set multiplier of 11X). If I set the frequency to 200Mhz 
(to get 3200+ running at 2200Mhz) the system simply reboots and reboots 
and reboots and reboots, ad nauseum.

So, the frequency is set to 166Mhz, the RAM is recognised correctly as 
Dual Channel 1.5GB, and I can boot and use the system on the flash 
drive, all the Live CDs.

But put an HD in, or a pair of HDs, and nothing 'works'.

In fact, during a boot-up after a complete shutdown the BIOS recognises 
both HDs - but nothing 'works'. I press the Reboot button...and the BIOS 
doesn't recognise that there is an HD on the Primary Channel...or it may 
be on the Second Channel...or it may not see the Secondary Slave on the 
Primary Channel....have your pick.

Remove the HDs and all the CDs work.

I'm now into my 3rd week with this. Nerves are very frayed - but I can 
still manage to smile, albeit wryly :-) .

BC

[1] All my HDs on all 3 computers are in cradles so that I can swap them 
around. All HDs are paired (HD0 and HD1), but in this particular case of 
this @#$%&^#!! A7N8X 'Dee-lucks' ASUS motherboard I actually broke a 
pair up to see if I could get this @#$%&^#!! A7N8X 'Dee-lucks' ASUS 
motherboard to recognise and work with a single HD.

Ah, something probably worth mentioning: the reason why I broke up such 
pairing is that at one stage I was getting error messages, when trying 
to use HDs, such as "MBR Error"[2]. So I took one HD and zapped the MBR 
on it to see if I could install Ubuntu on it; no way Jose :-( . The 
usual freeze as mentioned above.

[2] And No, the virus checker is disabled :-) .

-- 
Sound that shatters silence is called noise. Sound that enhances silence is called music.
                                           Chinese proverb