[syslinux] extlinux "boot failed" on older (pentium 3) motherboards

[H. Peter Anvin]

Nick wrote:
> I have 3 older pentium-3 systems (asus cubx, asus cusl2-c) that give a
> "boot failed" message when trying to boot with extlinux on a flash card
> (which uses an ide converter, so it looks like a regular ide hard drive to
> the os & bios).  These worked fine when I used syslinux & fat16.

What's the EXACT message you get?  Also, do you get ANY other output? 
Please describe verbatim; this is very important.  Also, which MBR do 
you use?

> If I take out the flash card & ide converter and put it in a newer p4
> system, it boots fine.  So I would assume that I did the extlinux install
> & partitioning just fine.  In fact I have been using it for a while now
> with no problems in newer systems, and only now am running into a problem
> when I am trying to upgrade some older systems.
> 
> I was thinking extlinux would boot on any system that syslinux would.  Am
> I incorrect?  Any ideas?

It *should*, but it's probably tripping on a BIOS bug that somehow 
syslinux avoids.  This is very odd, because the code is pretty much 
exactly the same.

	-hpa