Install of SUSE 11.2 went fine. Key board and mouse worked during install then rebooted after install and I get this message. If you are running unix you need to configure your system using the compaq user diagnostic diskette… If I press f1 to load default settings it loads grub tryed to load suse normal and safe mode it loads suse and gets to suse screen but keyboard and mouse wont work. Tryed to find download with no luck.
The computer is a Compaq professional workstation ap200
Any one have any solutions?
Thanks
Compaq were taken over by HP some years ago. If you look on the HP web site and put in your model number, search for drivers, select MSDOS (yes) as your operating system, you should see some stuff under the Bios category. It used to be called ‘rompaq’ or something. You then create a floppy with an MSDos system that installs / upgrades the Bios (I think!).
However, this is quite an old machine is it not? Maybe a 600MHz Pentium III with 356 MB of memory? If it has low memory it may lock up at boot, which is why nothing works.
Give full details of the machine for other people to help you better.
By the way could you put more commas and full stops in your sentences to make it easier to read. Thanks.
The Compaq is a P3 450mhz 576 megs of memory. Im trying to build a budget,bare bones SUSE only computer for a lan server.
Well your hardware is a bit old. The problem with Compaq computers of that era (I used to have a Presario) was that they stored the bios on a special hidden partition on the hard disk. If you replaced the hard disk you had no bios until you restored it from the bios ‘rompaq’ floppy. You would be better off using ‘generic’ hardware, which is simpler to deal with.
Due to its age, your hardware should be checked out thoroughly before you install.
Hard disk: has this been replaced or the original? If the original, have you performed a badblocks test and looked at the S.M.A.R.T. parameters with the smartctl command to see if you have reallocated sectors? Both these commands can be run from the installation CD. If replaced, have you restored the bios with the ‘rompaq’ floppy? Can you press F10 immediately boot starts to get into the bios?.
Memory: have you performed a memory test (uses memtest86+), which is an option on the installation CD? You should perform 4 passes of 8 tests which may take a couple of hours. If there are any errors in red, replace memory.
Motherboard BIOS battery (may be a CR2032): Has this ever been replaced? Replace it now if not.
The 'If using UNIX … ’ error message that comes up: This is to do with the translation of disk address for the operating system (I think). For Windows the cylinders had to be remapped to a figure below 1024 but for Unix (Linux) they have to be raw. There may be a setting in the bios for that.