CF booting

[GT]

I've a little adapter that allowed me to plug 1 or 2 CompactFlash cards into
an IDE channel. I also have an old motherboard, ram, CPU and gfx card. I
have connected it all together and put DOS 6.22 on the CF card and the
machine boots. So the CF card is capable of holding a boot record and
booting an OS. If I try to install Ubuntu, or Win98, the DOS screen doesn't
get past "Verifying DMI Pool Data...." and it won't boot.

Its a 2GB CF card. Could this size be the problem? Its an Athlon 1800 with
0.75GB (512+256) ram and an AGP graphics Rad8500Gs card. All hardware is
working fine.

This is just an experiment - considering creating a NAS and print server
from old parts. I've a silent cooler on the CPU and the graphics card is
passive, so the machine is almost silent (PSU is only fan). If it works,
then I'll stick a hard disk in there and have it auto-spin down after 10
mins of no use = low power, quiet networked server.

Any ideas on the failing boot?

 

[GlowingBlueMist]

I've a little adapter that allowed me to plug 1 or 2 CompactFlash cards into
an IDE channel. I also have an old motherboard, ram, CPU and gfx card. I
have connected it all together and put DOS 6.22 on the CF card and the
machine boots. So the CF card is capable of holding a boot record and
booting an OS. If I try to install Ubuntu, or Win98, the DOS screen doesn't
get past "Verifying DMI Pool Data...." and it won't boot.

Its a 2GB CF card. Could this size be the problem? Its an Athlon 1800 with
0.75GB (512+256) ram and an AGP graphics Rad8500Gs card. All hardware is
working fine.

This is just an experiment - considering creating a NAS and print server
from old parts. I've a silent cooler on the CPU and the graphics card is
passive, so the machine is almost silent (PSU is only fan). If it works,
then I'll stick a hard disk in there and have it auto-spin down after 10
mins of no use = low power, quiet networked server.

Any ideas on the failing boot?

You might want to give the unetbootin program a try. I have used it to
install Linux on different sized USB drives and it does support
installing to a hard drive should your CF show up as that rather than a
USB drive.

The freeware program can be located at http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
and I would suggest trying Puppy Linux as a test due to it's small
download size.

The program can download and install on the fly or it can use stored ISO
files you have local on your system somewhere.