I'm want to use Linux on a Compaq 486/25SL notebook. I'm stuck on the following issues and would appreciate any pointers. 1 I believe the video ROM is being shadowed. The BIOS setup has options to shadow the video ROM at two different addresses, but none to turn it off. 2 Some memory is reserved, presumably for shadowing arcane stuff, including but not limited to battery management pop-ups (or is that in the video RAM?). 3 Who is reserving this memory? Does the BIOS do it? Or is it DOS? Since Linux (Debian) install instructions ask you to turn off all shadowing, I can do that automatically if DOS is doing the shadowing, but I get the impression that the BIOS does this. The how do I go about disabling shadowing and not reserving memory? 4 These machines were supposed to have a small partition with diagnostics programs on it. I don't see anything but a Big-DOS partition with FIPS and other HDD utilities. Can there be a parition that such an utility cannot see? 5 Some utilities I have used show 256k video RAM, but there's supposed to be 512k. The same utilities see 16450 UARTs on my serial port and a 16550A on the modem board, but MSD sees 8250s on the serial port. How reliable is this stuff? Are there definitive h/w utilities in Linux? 6 After resizing partitions using FIPS, the installation boot disk vomits a hda: read_intr: 0x40, but I figure that's because of wrong information in the BIOS.
I'm looking at the Troubleshooting info in the LDP and the PC h/w faqs. Any information will be highly appreciated. Thanks, -bhaskar