[CentOS] problem installing CentOS 5.3

Mon Sep 14 22:10:26 UTC 2009
Buz Davis <buzdavis at earthlink.net>

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