[NTLUG:Discuss] Dell Latitude Boot Problems

[Stephen Davidson]

Melody & Andrew Dennis wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
> I've been "lurking" on this list for quite a while, and finally decided to 
> join in.
> 
> Here's my problem:
> I have two Dell Latitude CPI Laptops, one 366MHz PII and one 400MHz PII,
> other than the CPU speeds & hard drive sizes, they are configured with exactly 
> the same hardware.  My problem is that after installation of Slack 9.2 with 
> the default kernel, no special configs or anything else, both computers boot 
> just fine the first time.  After that, when I reboot for one reason or 
> another, they just freeze at exactly the same point.  If this was an 
> incompatibility problem, I can see neither computer booting at all, but it 
> only occurs after I have installed, rebooted, worked a little bit, and then 
> attempted to boot again.........
> 
> I believe the problem lies with the NeoMagic 256 Video cards (kernel message 
> output is as follows)
> 
> PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 01:00.
> nm256: Found card signature in video RAM: 0x3fec00
> nm256: Mapping port 1 from 0x3f09a0 - 0x3fec00
> 
> At this point, boot progresses no further.  If I start the install process all 
> over, everything is fine until that magical second reboot.  I've reflashed 
> both bios's to the latest available, yet the problem still remains, although 
> some sound config problems I had are now gone.......
> 
> Any help would be greatly appreciated
> 
> Thanks
> Andrew Dennis
> 

Greetings.

Don't know anything about Slackware.

On my third Dell (first one was 200Mhz).  Running SuSE (7.0 & 7.2 on first one, 8.0 on second one, 8.2 on third one), only once had a problem, which 
was releated to acpi.

Regards,
Steve

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