I have a small fixed ip network at home, running red hat 9 on two amd k6 500 Mhz boxes. One has 256 M memory and the other 320 M. They pretty much meet my needs, but lately I have detected that the internet sites I frequent are requiring some more modern software than I can run. I attempted to install Fedora 8, but that failed on the AMD processors. So I ordered a set of CentOS 5.3 i386 disks.

The CentOS install fails also. I could get the first screen up, offering choices of how to boot, and if I asked for memtest86 that would start. (I had verified memory earlier, during my F8 attempts). However, any other choice resulted in a reboot (generally during loading of vmlinux). Sometimes the disk wouldn't be recognized as bootable. I have convinced myself that the disks are OK (see below) and that I must need either better hardware or more memory (but this is the i386 version of CentOS 5.3) or some parameter on the install that I haven't tried (and I've tried about all I have found or remember). I would appreciate any help.

What I've done so far: At first I thought that the CentOS 1of6 disk must be bad (couldn't even run a mediacheck) and emailed the vendor. Then it occurred to me that I could perhaps download and burn disk 1of6 and use that to get the install started. (Up until my attempts at F8 I had not had the capability to burn a CD. While trying with F8 I bought a used "intel inside" computer with a broken XP system on it. I blew that away but F8 found problems with the hard disk and wouldn't install. I managed to install RedHat 9, which gave me access to the CD). I reaized that the process would be a bit "iffy" on a box with hard-disk problems, and also I had never burned a cd, but googled around for instructions and plunged in. I downloaded an ios, checked it with md5sum and it was OK. I copied it to the "new" computer via NFS and checked it again: OK. I burned a CD using cdrecord, and the burn appeared to work. The result behaved much like the original had. I tried two more times, varying stuff that I thought might affect the burn, and always got the same sort of behavior. Finally I tried mounting (on a RH9 box) each of the four disks 1of6 I now had and copied (from /dev/cdrom rather than /mnt/cdrom, so as to avoid separating out the files) each to a separate directory and compared them. All three that I burned were identical. The "store bought" disk was a little larger, but compared OK up to EOF on the other (and I recall reading that mass-produced disks might be different in their padding). So I am convinced now that there is nothing wrong with either the original or recently burned disks 1of6 and the problem must either be requiring better/more hardware (but this is the i386 version of cent OS) or some parameter on the install I have never heard of.

Again, any advice would be appreciated.

Buz