Installation problem

["Sielaff, Bruce" <Bruce.Sielaff@iMcKesson.com>]

I am having an installation problem which has me baffled.  I will admit up
front that I am a novice with linux, so it may be something dumb that I am
overlooking.

I have an older Gateway P90 box w/80MB RAM, a 3.25GB IBM DeskStar HD, an ATI
Mach64GX video, and a 3Com Etherlink XL 10/100 NIC.  I have been having
problems installing 3 different distros, Red Hat 6.2, Mandrake 7.0, and
Storm Linux 2000.  The latter 2 I got for free from a magazine.

The problem I am having is that (1)at varying points during the install, the
system will freeze, or (2)after a successful installation will freeze during
the reboot, or (3) after a successful installation and reboot, the system
will freeze after running for a short time.  It seems independent of whether
I install X.  In the case of 2 or 3 above, if I hit the reset button on the
box, linux starts to boot, does an fsck and basically tells me that my
filesystem has been trashed.  Also, the installation process tells me that I
have very little memory and if, after installation, it successfully reboots,
the dmesg file reports only about 15MB of RAM.

On the other hand, I am able to install Windows (NT, 98, 95, 2000)
successfully and run it with no problem.  Also, Windows reports seeing 77MB
of RAM.

Has anyone seen this problem before?  I have tried several different
installations, including multiple partitions/filesystems or only a single /
partition/filesystem (plus a separate swap partition).

Any suggestions which help me solve this problem would be most appreciated.
My intent is to use this box as a firewall to my home network, which
includes a Dell box running Red Hat 6.2.

Thanks,
Bruce

----------------------------------------------
Bruce Sielaff
iMcKesson  952-814-7143
Bruce.Sielaff@iMcKesson.com


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