[TriLUG] quasi-OT: Hardware Issue confirmation?

[Brian A. Henning]

Hi guys,
  This is more of a hardware issue, I believe, than software, but we are
trying to install FC1 so I think it counts, right? :-)  At any rate...

The patient is a friend's aging Celeron 433 from CompUSA.  Un-branded
baby-ATX mobo, sporting a SiS 5595 southbridge chipset, onboard
audio/video/usb, socket 370.  256 MB RAM, split among one 128 and two 64 MB
sticks (PC100 SDRAM).  Wimpy 185 max wattage PS, but there's only one
Seagate 4.something HD, one 48X Max CD-ROM, and floppy drive.

The problem is we have been wholly unsuccessful in installing jack squat on
this thing.  Further maddening is the fact that the only reliable outcome is
that it WILL choke somewhere along the way.  Where, and how, remains largely
random.  I really believe it is a faulty mobo or CPU to blame, but I wanted
to present the symptoms for someone else who may be able to give a more
authoritative "I agree."

As I mentioned, in most instances, the installation process simply freezes
at a random point.  However, some minor patterns did emerge.

If booting from CD, the boot process was most likely to freeze at one of the
following two points:
Immediately after
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
or at
running /sbin/loader...

Turning off the framebuffer (as /sbin/loader is the point at which that
appears to begin making a difference) actually proved to be
detrimental---with the nofb boot option, often the left third of the screen
would become filled with a column of garbage characters (in textmode---the
one time X successfully started, there were a couple columns of garbled and
reflected pixels [snowy images of other parts of the screen], and it froze,
so we stuck to textmode from then on).

Using the mediacheck option sometimes managed to push the process through to
the media verification, during which (somewhere in the 20% range) the
computer spontaneously rebooted itself.

Booting from floppy and attempting an FTP install most commonly froze after
Transferring Fedora/base/netstg2.img, before anaconda was launched.  A few
times, Anaconda was launched and got as far as detecting the video, monitor,
and mouse before freezing.  Once, ONCE, the process got as far as completing
Disk Druid.  Once.  Out of what felt like hundreds of attempts.  Only twice
did the process get even as far as selecting Desktop, Laptop, Server, or
Custom installation variety.

We've played with RAM timing (the primitive Award bios, the most recent
available for that hardware being two years old, offered little Wait State
adjustment [0WS or 1WS]---that was one suggestion we came across...also
futzed with SDRAM Input and Output signal timing), IDE transfer modes, and
other sundry BIOS options, generally to no perceivable avail.

Other common exits were the infuriatingly vague "Installer terminated
abnormally," or a Kernel Panic claiming inability to mount root file system
at either 09:01 or 48:03 (I believe).

cpio: bad magic
was also a common apparently nonfatal error, which seemed to be loosely tied
to enabling 32-bit IDE transfers.

We reseated everything multiple times.  I noted that the first two DIMM
slots seemed rather loose; I don't know if they were electrically loose, but
they definitely felt as though they did not have a strong mechanical grip on
the DIMMs.  I borrowed some RAM from a friend to swap out.  memtest86
crashed at about 60%.  I don't think the ram sticks themselves are to blame.

We tried numerous IDE cable swaps.  Unhooking the CD-ROM.  Unhooking the HD,
just to see if it would boot all the way (it still randomly froze).

The absolutely most maddening, frustrating aspect is that insanity reigned
supreme---meaning that exactly the same input often yielded wildly differing
results.

Other distros that failed to boot successfully included SuSE Live Eval 9.0,
Knoppix 3.3, Red Hat Linux 9.  WinXP also failed to make it all the way
through the boot process.

So the total of all that makes me think it's hardware.  Anyone able to
evaluate these symptoms and say "yeah, you're probably right?"  If there's
something we're missing, we'd love to know about it.  My friend is new to
the linux world and is eager to plunge in and learn his way around FC.

If anyone has an old mobo with the same baby-ATX form factor sporting Socket
370, or a Socket 370 processor around 433MHz they'd be willing to lend or
part with so we can try other hw, let me know.  I'd definitely appreciate
it.

Thanks a lot for wading through all this and offering any insight.

Cheers,
~Brian