FreeBSD 6.2 install CD causes immediate reboot

[Andrew Gould]

> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Garrett Cooper <youshi10 at u.washington.edu>
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2007 12:16:08 PM
> Subject: Re: FreeBSD 6.2 install CD causes immediate reboot
> 
> 
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> Erik Trulsson wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 28, 2007 at 09:34:44AM -0800, Andrew Gould wrote:
> >> I was given a Dell Dimension m200a yesterday by someone 
> >> who recently upgraded.  I think it was created around 1997.
> >>
> >> CPU:  Pentium
> >> RAM: 48MB
> >>
> >> odd:  This PC runs Win95; but has 2 usb ports.  Didn't 
> >> Win98 predate usb ports?
> >
> > No, USB ports started appearing around 1996.  It took a while
> > before they become widespread though.  The later revisions
> > of Win95 did have support for USB, which was improved in Win98.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >> When I try to boot up with the FreeBSD 6.2 installation CD, 
> >> the system tries to boot from the CD; but then reboots before 
> >> anything messages from the CD appear on the monitor.
> >>
> >> Is there something I can try, or should I just give up?
> >> I have a hard time throwing functional hardware in the trash.
> >> Maybe I'm struggling too much with my own mortality; but 
> >> that's a different discussion.  ;-)
> > 
> > You could try booting an older version of FreeBSD (4.x probably since 5.x is
> > very similar to 6.x) and see if that works.  You could also
> > fiddle with various BIOS settings.  You could also try the boot floppies.
> > 
> > If none of that works I would give up trying to install FreeBSD on that
> > computer.

Booting with FreeBSD 6.2 floppies worked.  Thanks!

Andrew

Try booting the CD without acpi / apm support too. apm support with dell
is fruity, and acpi shouldn't have really been supported all the way
with the machine either.

Moreover, you can try making a boot floppy with the BIOS update as the
current BIOS version may not support Unix installs.

I agree though--if you can't boot freebsd, you should give up. There are
versions of Linux that may run on the laptop though, so you can give
that a shot as well..

Also just for the sake of the archives, Win95 ver. b (basically SP2) did
have USB support but it really sucked; I couldn't the machine to
recognize a number of USB devices with this version of 95. However,
Win98 made a big difference in this arena since they started properly
supporting USB and so that's probably one reason why many people upgraded.

- -Garrett
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