[syslinux] Loading linux.. [hangs]

[H. Peter Anvin]

Ed Skinner wrote:
>      Booting from floppy (with syslinux), I see the Syslinux banner, then
> Loading linux..
>      and it hangs "forever" at that point. (FWIW: There are exactly two 
> periods in the above output.) Using the same floppy on a different (and much 
> more recent) machine, "linux" loads and runs without problem. "linux" is a 
> bzImage file, by the way.
>      The failing machine is an old notebook, Epson Action Note 4000, with an 
> 486SLC processor, 8Mb RAM and no co-processor. This is a 2.4.22 Linux kernel, 
> configured as small as I think is possible. Perhaps the kernel image is still 
> too big, or maybe the code is linked for a non-existent physical address in 
> this tiny machine?
>      Here's the content of syslinux.cfg from the floppy:
> ------------------------- begin -----------------------
> TIMEOUT 50
> DEFAULT linux
> LABEL linux
> KERNEL linux
> APPEND root=/dev/ram0 initrd=fs.gz
> ------------------------- end -------------------------
>        I'd love to have this machine working with Linux for sitting around the 
> coffee house blog-work.
>        Suggestions sincerely appreciated.

It probably has a nonstandard A20 gate.  This is generally extremely 
difficult to debug and even harder to find a good solution for.

I'm not familiar with the 486SLC and obviously not with the motherboard.

	-hpa