[nzlug] Compaq evo D500 installation

[SIMON WALKDEN]

G'day guys,

I've acquired some dirt-cheap machines from trademe; two identical
compaq evo d500's, and have tried installing centos-5 to no avail. the
dvd media is recognised, but once a boot option is selected, vmlinuz
and initrd.img load and the hardware reboots.

I've tried several boot options (linux acpi=off, linux nofb, linux
ide=nodma) but nothing makes any difference. I discovered some other
fedora users with the same issue who had found that if random
characters were entered with the initial boot prompt, it would
obviously tell you that what you entered was incorrect, then boot
properly from the second boot prompt. Unfortunately I didn't have any
luck with this option either. Booting with linux rescue makes no
change.

Has anyone experienced this with compaq hardware in the past, or shed
any light on the cause?

- Simon

-- 
"Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum
immane mittam."