[newbie] kernel panic during install when formatting swap partition on PowerMac 8600

[Daniel Segel]

I'm trying to install Mandrake 8.2/PPC on a Powermac 8600/300 with 2x4GB SCSI hard drives and 192MB RAM in it. I've tried installing onto both drives, but I get the same error either way. The problem I'm having is that I get a kernel panic when the installer gets to the point of trying to format the swap partition. If I don't create a swap partition then it goes through that step just fine, but obviously I wouldn't bother continuing in that case.

The weird part is that I get a similar crash when trying to install Yellowdog linux as well, but it's only the swap partition that causes a problem.

I've already tried a low-level format of the drives, and I've tried putting the swap partition in different places on the drive. I also ran the Yellowdog version of parted and tried creating partitions manually - everything goes fine until I actually try to create the filesystem on the swap partition, then it blows up. Actually, if I create a really small swap partition (~10MB) then it works OK, but 128MB or larger doesn't. I haven't done any testing to determine the largest successful swap partition I can create a filesystem on.

Any ideas? This has been driving me crazy for a week now.

Thanks,

Daniel

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