Thanks guys for all the help.

I have been trying for almost a week to get Ubuntu 6.06 "Dapper
Drake" version
of Ubuntu installed. I have at least 3 or 4 older mother
boards and half a dozen video cards. Apparently
Ubuntu is real picky about video chip sets.
I finally found an ATI video card that seems  work.

"Basic Installation from one of the EMC2 Live CD's is easier and
faster than ever."

Well not exactly. I depends on how you save the image on a DVD
Fedora 8 Linux gives you an option. Image or file. If you choose
file it does not work. I found that out the hard way.

I find that Red Hat and Fedora are much easier to install
on a variety of hard ware.  Ubuntu keeps you in the dark while it
is installing. There is nothing on the screen that tells you what,
why or how it is doing. After awhile you think the program has
crashed and you hit reset.

I have tried two versions so far. Ubuntu 6.06 and Ubuntu 9.04
They both appears to have the same problem on a variety of
hardware. EMC2 requires Ubuntu 6.06.

Also I suspect they do not like to install over other versions of
Linux.

I bought Disk Purge to wipe an old Red Hat Linux drive clean and
then used Vicom Partition Commander to partition the disk and format
it. That seemed to help. No info in the instructions on the
preferred file format so I used
Linux ext3 which may be a mistake.


I can highly recommends a $50, 1500 page book called Upgrading and
Repairing PCs.
by Scott Mueller. There is a Linux version out. This is a complete
history of the PC going back to early IBM's and all the variations
of CPU's and chip sets.
There are many.

I almost have it working. The Ubuntu 6.06 is running off the DVD
right at the moment and trying to install itself on the hard drive.
It takes so long that I left it running in the hangar and will go
back latter to see
if it will boot from the hard drive.

Paul Lamar

Hi Paul,

You should be OK with ext3.  The only thing a little inconvenient
about it is every 20 or 30 times you boot up it goes into a disk
diagnostic mode.  Just go do something else for 10 or 15 minutes.
You can cancel out of it, but I figure having the file system
checked every so often isn't a bad thing.

I've been using Ubuntu for a couple of years now.  I don't
remember having any particular problem loading it.  I'm using an HP
Pavilion a630n with a 2.8 GHz Pentium processor and whatever video
is built in to it.  Ubuntu makes it easy to keep all the software
updated and so far, I have never had a problem with any upgrade
breaking the system.

It sounds like for your application you don't want updates anyway.
 If you're not connected to the internet, updates aren't all that
important.

Bob W.

--
N93BD - Rotary Powered BD-4 - http://www.bob-white.com
3.8 Hours Total Time and holding
Cables for your rotary installation - http://roblinstores.com/


After spending 3 hours installing the software I took the
disk out of the DVD drive and attempt to boot off the hard disk.
Grub loads and then I get ERROR 18............ nothing else!

What is ERROR 18?

Paul Lamar

Paul,

You said:

"I have tried two versions so far. Ubuntu 6.06 and Ubuntu 9.04a"
-------

Have you tried the Ubuntu 8.04 / EMC2 live cd that you can get
here:

http://www.linuxcnc.org/content/view/21/4/lang,en/

____________________________________?

This iso image is small enough to burn to a CD. I never tried
burning it to a DVD.

This version; Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron", is the version that I
have been using. I have not tried 6.06 Dapper Drake. The install
screen usually keeps you updated re: what is going on. If it goes
blank for a long time, then something is hanging the install
process.

I had quite a few hangs while installing from the 8.04 live cd. It
turned out that I had a defective motherboard ( Gateway Profile w/
Pentium 4 ) so I
exchanged it for a Dell Precision 530 which worked just fine.
These computers were all available in my area (Albuquerque) from
surplus shops for
under 100 bucks, who usually have a return policy.

You mentioned earlier that you had a Shuttle XPC. Why not give
that one a try?

Tom

I have not tried 8.04 yet.

Yes I am going through the same things.
I did a bios memory check and that seemed OK.
When I finally got Unbuntu Grub to boot off the hard disk
it said the memory was bad. The MB sat around for ten years
So the contacts may be corroded I fixed that and then the mem test
would run for 3 or 4 minutes and crash on the block moves. So I
fixed that and then it told me the clock was bad. Probably the
battery as that sat around for ten years as well. I can't believe a
dead clock battery can cause
the kernal to crash but maybe the real time version uses the bat
clock. The voltage on the bat was .5 volts so that appears to be a
real possibility.

I'll get a new battery today and try it again.


BTW I bought a new DVD drive and that did not fix the ERROR 18.
That too seemed to be the bad mem.

I am using SOYO SY-K7 VIA mother board
with a 750 Mhz processor.

Model
SY-K7VIA
Description
- 200MHz System Interface Speed Slot-A Based VIA KX133 ATX
Motherboard Processor
- Single Slot-A for AMD-K7 Processor 500MHz ~800 MHz and faster
- 128Kbyte L1 cache built-in
- 512Kbyte L2 cache built-in
- 200MHz System interface Speed
Chipset
- VIA KX133 AGP chipset
System Memory
- Three 168-pin SDRAM 3.3V DIMM sockets support up to 1.5GB
- PC100/PC133 SDRAM support
- Provides ECC (Error Checking Correction) capability
Expansion Slots
- Five 32-bit Bus Mastering PCI slots (V2.2 compliant)
- One 16-bit ISA slots (one shared ISA/PCI slot)
- One AGP slot (v1.0 compliant, AGP 1X/2X/4X)
- One AMR (Audio Modem Riser) slot
On Board Ultra I/O Chip
- Chipset built-in I/O features
- Two RS-232 serial ports (16550 UART compatible)
- One parallel printer port (SPP/EPP/ECP mode)
- One FDD port (Supports LS120, 3 mode, 1.2/1.44/2.88 MB FDD
- Provides IrDA port with optional cable for transceiver
Ultra DMA 33 & 66 IDE Ports
- Two independent channels for four IDE devices
- Supports up to PIO Mode 4 and UDMA/66
- Two PCI bus mastering ATA E-IDE ports
Boot-Block Flash BIOS
- Award PCI BIOS with ACPI function
- Supports multiple-boot from E-IDE/ SCSI/ CD-ROM/ FDD/ LS120/ ZIP
- 2 Mbit Flash ROM
Board Dimensions
- Four layers, 30.5 cm x 22 cm(12" x 8.7")
- ATX form factor
Enhanced PC Health Monitoring
- On-board voltage monitors for +5V, +12V, VCORE, VTT and VBAT
status - System health status detect
- System temperature sensor
- CPU temperature monitoring through flexible thermal sensor under
processor heatsink
Double Stack Back-Panel I/O Connectors
- PS/2 Mini-DIN mouse & keyboard ports
- Two USB ports
- Two D-Sub 9-pin male serial ports
- One D-Sub 25-pin female printer port
- Audio I/O: LINE-Outx1 , LINE-Inx1, MIC JACK x1
- One game port
--
----------------------------------------------

I changed to 804 and it does pretty much the same things.

I went out and spent $400 bucks on a new MegaByte mother board,
processor and memory. Guess what. Unbuntu refused to load.

In frustration a grabbed and old Fedora 5 and stuck it in the DVD
drive. Guess what? It loaded right off the bat with no problems.

Fedora install program is ten times better than Ubuntu keeping
you well informed on what it is doing, why it is doing what it is
doing and how long it is going to take. Unbuntu sometimes gives you
a blinking cursor
and other times nothing and sometimes the light blinks on the DVD
drive.

Fedora 5 also loaded on the board above with no problems.

BTW there is no need for half the stuff on the install distro.
Who is going to use open office on their mill computer??
If they removed half that useless stuff it would take a lot less
time to load and install.

Paul Lamar

What cpu, mobo, memory did you get?

Vlad

AMD Phenom II quad core 3.0 giga Hertz 6 meg cache
Gigabyte GA -MA7
2 DDR 4 GB PC850 1066 Mega Hertz

I'll probably wind up using this for the newsletter as my current
computer can handle only one hard drive and a DVD. I need some
fast back up.

Paul Lamar

Paul & Group
If the linux install hardware probing aint happy with the linux
installer , then the installer hangs anyway. You could try the
" nopentium " option which turns off some of the hardware probing - you
have to select the boot menu. Also , kernal supprt for some chipsets
seems to be going in some cases.