On 10/21/2014 10:49 AM, Peter King wrote:
I'm trying to revive an old computer.
The CPU is an Athlon XP 2500, on an Asus A7X87 motherboard, with 3GB of RAM. The internal connections are all PATA. It has both USB ports and a DVDRW drive installed. Up until a month or so ago, it ran as well as an old computer could, with Gentoo installed. Then a hard disc went bad, and that's when the fun began.
The BIOS, which dates from 2004, wouldn't let me boot from a USB stick (the only options are USB-FDD and USB-ZIP). So I started burning boot CDs, all of which fail: Gentoo current install disc; SysRescue CD; the Debian 7.0 live install disc; Archliinx; and OpenBSD. As I said, they all fail, quite early on in the process: the BIOS tells me "ATAPI CDROM: No Emulation" and then starts loading each disc, but fails one way or another, never getting through a kernel load as far as I can tell (which isn't very far). I have swapped the DVDRW drive out for another one, with no change in results; I have changed the PATA cable connected to the DVDRW twice, also with no change in results. MemTest seems quite happy with the installed RAM.
The boot failures are inconsistent, but, for what it's worth, here is how they each fail:
(1) Gentoo install disc: Gets as far as starting to load the kernel when the screen goes black. Sometimes that triggers a BIOS reboot, but at other times it just sits there. Tried several combinations of kernel modules: nofb, noacpi, no-hardware-detection, and so on, without any making a difference.
(2) Sysrecue CD: Latest version simply segfaults after the "ISOLinux" declaration.
(3) Debian 7.0 live install disc: Gets to the menu of choices, and will usually allow me to make a choice; picking "Install" in any form causes a black screen followed by a reboot. Under the "Advanced" menu I can run MemTest, though.
(4) Archlinux install disc: Once I got to the menu, with the motherboard wildly beeping in the background, but wasn't able to select any of the choices. Every other time it just triggers a reboot.
(5) OpenBSD 5.6 install disc: Starts loading the kernel but freezes after printing the UC copyright notice.
Google turns up lots of suggestions for the "no emulation" message, most of which are either "switch the cable" or "change the drive", both of which I've tried, as noted.
The next thing I'll try is to remove one hard disc, install it in some other functional computer, and install a bootable Gentoo (or whatever) on it there, then reinstalling the disc on the old computer to see if it will boot from it. I'm happy (enough) to do that, but I'm bothered by the brick wall I've hit in trying to do something ordinary, namely to boot from a CDR. Any ideas?
If you think the MB might be the problem, one thing I would try is to remove the MB from the case, place it on a non-conductive material, reconnect all cables and try again.