Red Hat Linux Installation Problem (1 Viewer)

[Charles Bober]

I finally decided to take the plunge and learn Linux. Not only as an alternative to Microsoft but as a way of advancing my skills. But upon attempting installation, I've run into a snag. I downloaded Red Hat 7.3. When I say I downloaded it, I mean I found an ftp site and downloaded the entire directory contained therein which turned out to be 5.81GB.
Here's what I've done so far. I burned the 3 ISO images to CD. Since the Compaq Deskpro 4000 would not boot from a CD, I made a bootable floppy. When I power up the system, the pc recognizes the floppy and begins asking questions about installation. It asks me what language, what type of keyboard, and then here's where I get stuck. It asks me what media contains the installation info, local cd-rom or local hard drive. I select cd-rom and it says "The Red Hat Linux CD Rom was not found in any of the cd-rom drives. Please insert the Red Hat Linux CD Rom and try again." Unfortunately I haven't found anyone who has been able to help me.
So what do I do to get past this? If anyone would like to e-mail regarding this, please use [email protected] or you can contact me via ICQ at 61719049. My current listed e-mail address is in limbo until I get the hosting issue cleared up. Thanks in advance.

 

[Kevin P]

There's one of two possibilities here:

1. The CD drive in your Compaq can't read the CD-Rs. You can verify this by booting into DOS or Windows on the machine and see if you can read the CD.

2. The CD drive is a SCSI drive or other type that the Linux boot floppy doesn't recognize. Being a Compaq Deskpro 4000 (as in proprietary) it wouldn't surprise me. When I installed Mandrake Linux on a home-built SCSI-based machine a couple years ago I couldn't get the boot floppy to recognize the SCSI CD-ROM drive, so I had to install a IDE CD drive to install the Linux. Once Linux was installed on the hard drive it would recognize the SCSI drive.

KJP