Subject: New Debian 1.1 fails on Micron 486VL system

From: Edward Haines <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 96 21:42:16 EDT

I tried loading the new Debian Linux 1.1 on my Micron VL system here at home. 
It does the Loading ... and Uncompressing Linux OK.  It then prints about a
screenfull of messages, ending with a message about my third hard drive,
followed within about a second of what looks like some kind of dump.  The
interesting messages disappear so quickly that I can't make them out, even
after several attempts.  

The "dump" fills the screen with things like [<0010ffaa>], somewhat over a
screenfull at a time.  After about three seconds, it repeats, etc.  At this
point nothing I try on the keyboard does anything.  I have to hit the reset
button to get out.

I tried disabling everything I could think of in setup;  nothing made any
difference.

The same boot diskette works in an older 386-sx machine.  I don't have any
extra disk space on it so I aborted the load when it asked my to repartition
the disk.

The Micron system is a 486VL DX2-66, from July 1993 with the most recent BIOS
available from Micron.  It normally runs Windows 95 or Slackware 2.1 with a
1.2.13 kernel.  I recently tried the 2.0.0 kernel and it works mostly OK.

Here is the output of dmesg from the Slackware system:

Console: colour EGA+ 80x25, 1 virtual console (max 63)
Calibrating delay loop.. ok - 33.55 BogoMips
Serial driver version 4.11 with no serial options enabled
tty00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
tty01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16450
lp1 at 0x0378, using polling driver
snd3 <Pro AudioSpectrum 16 rev 127> at 0x388 irq 7 drq 3
snd2 <SoundBlaster 2.0> at 0x220 irq 5 drq 1
snd1 <Yamaha OPL-3 FM> at 0x388 irq 0 drq 0
hda: Maxtor 7345 AT, 329MB w/64KB Cache, CHS=790/15/57, MaxMult=32
hdb: Maxtor 7546 AT, 522MB w/256KB Cache, LBA, CHS=1060/16/63, MaxMult=16
hdc: WDC AC2850F, 814MB w/64KB Cache, LBA, CHS=1654/16/63, MaxMult=16
ide1: secondary interface on irq 15
ide0: primary interface on irq 14
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M, fd1 is 1.2M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
scsi0 : at 0x0388 irq 10 options CAN_QUEUE=32  CMD_PER_LUN=2 release=3 generic o
ptions AUTOPROBE_IRQ AUTOSENSE PSEUDO DMA UNSAFE  generic release=6
scsi0 : Pro Audio Spectrum-16 SCSI
scsi : 1 host.
  Vendor: NEC       Model: CD-ROM DRIVE:84   Rev: 1.0 
  Type:   CD-ROM                             ANSI SCSI revision: 01
Detected scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, id 4, lun 0
scsi : detected 1 SCSI cdrom total.
Memory: 14792k/16384k available (672k kernel code, 384k reserved, 536k data)
This processor honours the WP bit even when in supervisor mode. Good.
Swansea University Computer Society NET3.019
Swansea University Computer Society TCP/IP for NET3.019
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
PPP: version 0.2.7 (4 channels) NEW_TTY_DRIVERS OPTIMIZE_FLAGS
TCP compression code copyright 1989 Regents of the University of California
PPP line discipline registered.
Checking 386/387 coupling... Ok, fpu using exception 16 error reporting.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... Ok.
Linux version 1.2.13 (root@plaid) (gcc version 2.7.0) #4 Sun Jan 28 00:31:09 EST
 1996
Partition check:
  hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4
  hdb: hdb1 hdb2
  hdc: hdc1 hdc4
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
UMSDOS Beta 0.6 (compatibility level 0.4, fast msdos)
Max size:313058   Log zone size:2048
First datazone:20   Root inode number 40960
Adding Swap: 9996k swap-space
ppp: channel ppp0 mtu = 1500, mru = 1500
ppp: channel ppp0 open

I have tried just about everything I can think of, short of pulling out
hardware.  Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks,
Ted Haines