It seems this machine is a terrible choice over 100 plus articles on memory
problems with this model.
I would update the bios. However to do this here is a catch you have to have
a dos partition to do it.
Why because Compaqs' get their Bios information stored off the hard drive. I
know this all too well at
Walter Industries we used Compuke's and this is a problem with many models.
This is from Western Digital site .
http://support.wdc.com/tips/index.asp?tip=39
Some Compaq computers store the system BIOS information in a non-dos or
diagnostic partition on the hard drive instead of storing it on a chip on
the motherboard as most other systems do. If you have such a Compaq model
and you install the new drive as a master, you will need to copy or
reinstall the diagnostic partition onto the new drive. If you don't, you
will not be able to get into your BIOS upon bootup.
I even have disk from compaq that was sent to me from their engineers to
restore the servers. We had one of these.
They told me that if the Dos Partition with the Bios information was removed
it would give weird and unstable results.
This was per Proliant's, The Proliniants and some Deskpro Desktops.
If you do not believe it then check compaqs downloads you will see the
softpaq's will create this partition to load the Bios.
First I would make sure if you are installing it that you choose the smp
option for the dual processors!
also try this link to see if it helps. From a glance there is a problem with
2.4 kernel loading on this machine.
linux-hardware@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu/msg0418">http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-hardware@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu/msg0418
8.html
I found this as well
http://www.van-dijk.net/mailarchive/vandijk0104/0010.html
According to this there is a problem even with 7.1 not seeing the ram. This
guy is running 512 megs so he loaded Mandrake and it worked.
http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/21/2000/6/0/3932844/
http://clue.denver.co.us/pipermail/clue-talk/1999-June/001810.html
Also before installing any distro I would always check the HCL Hardware
Compatibility List of any OS before just loading it.
Also try to search on www.google.com on Red Hat 7.3 Compaq 2500r
Installation to see if you pull up any threads on such things.
Good Luck
> Subject: Re: [SLUG] In need of dire help for Installing Linux on Compaq
> 2500 R
>
> On Saturday 03 August 2002 01:06, Ranjan Sharma wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Just got a comapq 2500R with pentium 200Mhz dual
> processor
> > 256MB ram. 5 4.3GB SCSI-3 Hard Disk controlled by Smart 2-DH
> > controller in RAID-5. I was trying to install Redhat 7.3 on it. Which
> > dies saying not enough ram. Serached google found some other people
> > saying that. Now if any one else tried this and succesed so please
> > let me know. Other wise is their a way to install Suse/Debian without
> > connecting to internet i mean during the installation. Or should i
> > try any other distribution. I want to make this as a Router/Mail
> > Server/Firewall/IMAP Server No X is required.
> > Although this has two ether net card on it. I don't want to
> > put this on internet without configuting everyhitng. I have another
> > pc which is running my mailserver so can not afford to connect to
> > internet for installation.
> >
> > Bye
> > ranjan
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