[lug] Re: Compaq and Linux(Was CD-R drives)

[Michael J. Pedersen]

On Thu, Oct 21, 1999 at 07:52:34AM -0600, Tim Fredrick wrote:
> As a facility that primarily uses Linux on Compaq PC's I thought I'd
> beter pipe in :-)  Their BIOS is indeed on a special partition, but
> the partition is small, and the Redhat installations that we do seem
> to allow you to leave it alone.  You also have the option to access the
> same BIOS functions from a floppy or CD-ROM boot in case something bad
> happens to the hard disk partition.

People have had very good experiences installing Linux on Compaq, and I should
have clarified what happened for me specifically:

When I tried to install Debian 2.1 (latest stable release), the cfdisk utility
couldn't read the partition table due to that special BIOS software partition
being of a non-standard type.  As a result, installation was more than a
little wacky as I made separate bios floppies, ænd then blew away the
partition table so cfdisk would work.

While newer versions of the cfdisk and fdisk utility may work correctly,
Debian 2.1 didn't.

-- 
Michael J. Pedersen
WhoDP: whodp://earth.activerse.com/pedersen
Check out Ding! at http://www.activerse.com
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