Rh9 Help!

[TechSupport420]

First off--I'm a nOOb to linux for the most part... So I have this old pentium 2 that I just cleaned out and painted and put back together with some extra RAM and a newer 6GB HD then it had. So I put win2000 on there to make sure everything looked good and all my hardware was working ok. It worked great so I reformated and tossed the RH9 CD in there as it was running the check before booting the GUI installation program it picked up my CDROM, ZIP drive, etc. and all my hardware when it got to the partition check it said
"hdd: "
"hdd: Lost Interrupt"
"hdd: Lost Interrupt"
and it would keep going, I tried to format the drive once again and make sure all my partitions were gone but it still lost interrupt after getting frustrated with trying to put my finger on what was going on I tried Suse 8.0 and it does the same thing. I'm a Windows guy ready to play with Linux any suggestions or links or references would be great. Thanks guys
-RYan

[kilgoretrout]

My guess is it's something with your zip drive. I assume it's an IDE one. Correct me if I'm wrong. One quick thing to try is put a zip disk in the drive and try to boot. Also,, post back with your IDE configuration.
Linux sees an IDE zip drive as a hard drive. I think it's trying to read the disk and can't so it throws a hissy fit and won't go any farther. In linux, hdd is the slave device on the second IDE channel.

[TechSupport420]

thanks for the reply kilgore I'm at work now, so when I get home I'm going to try unplugging the zip because it is IDE and that may be the problem. It's on the secondary IDE controller along with the CDROM and the HD is on primary IDE controller. The thing is it sees all my hardware and lists the zip and CD and HD so I guess it is looking for partitions on the zip and can't get it, I tried putting a zip in already with the same results maybe if I just unplug it. I will post results thanks again
-Ryan

[kilgoretrout]

The problem is with hdd. If your zip drive is set to slave on IDE2 than it's hdd. If your cdrom is slave on IDE2, it's hdd. It could also be having problems with the cdrom. Check your jumpers on the cdrom and zip drive to isolate the correct device. If your using cable select jumpering try explicitly jumpering the devices on IDE2 master and slave. It's not suprising that your IDE devices are properly identified. All IDE devices have an identifier hard wired into them which is what the install program is reading. It doesn't mean it can properly use them. Some old cdroms require special drivers to be loaded before linux can use them, but my bets on the zip drive. I've seen more than one person have trouble configuring zip IDE drives in linux.

[TechSupport420]

well I just built the thing from random parts and tested it with windows so I was expecting some problems with my zip. It boots linux off the CD so I'm assuming the CD is fine, I will unplug the zip tonite and get back to you. Thanks a lot for the replies kilgore I will keep you posted, maybe need more suggestions

[TechSupport420]

Alright kudos to kilgore for the quick advice..unplugged my zip drive and all is well, im on my new RH9 box right now, thanks again

[kilgoretrout]

Your most welcome. Glad it worked. Welcome to linux!!! I'm sure you will enjoy yourself but there is a real learning curve here. Give yourself and linux a chance and be patient. If you like tinkering with computers as I suspect most people on these boards do, there's nothing better than linux.

[LocoCoyote]

Kilgore is 100% correct about the learning curve, the giving linux a chance and the patience. I am climbing that curve now....but I must say RH9 is very user friendly. So much so in fact, I have installed FreeBSD to get deeper into the Unix part of Linux.....did any of that make sense?

[TechSupport420]

So far I love RH9, its working great for me it was really easy to set up on my network and get it sharing with my windows machines, I love all the differn't packages you can install with RH9 too. Let the tinkering begin!