Install on Dell Dimension 450?? Please help.

[Stefan Berg <stefan berg ausys se>]

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Hi,
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am having great difficulties installing RedHat 5 on my Dell Dimension 450
Mhz PII..
(Model is called Dell Dimension XPS R450)
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The problem seems to be related to the NIC somehow. Or possibly disk
problem.
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The default NIC is a 3c905B (PCI) - and I have been a lot of problems with
these cards,
so I have also tried a 3c905 (PCI) and a 3c509B (ISA) without success.
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Another thing that may be of interest is that the 14 GB IBM drive that comes
with my
computer is only recognized as a 8 GB drive by DiskDruid/fdisk.
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The install methods I have tried are:
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1) Installing via FTP
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??????? Source: ftp.sunet.se /pub/os/Linux/distributions/redhat (have also
tried others)
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??????? Problems: does not reach the FTP-server: Failed to connect to FTP
server.
??????? Also, card only sometimes replies on "ping". 
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??????? Attempts to solve problem: Tried different NICs as specified above,
and made sure I have 
??????? the latest boot.img and supp.img from ftp.redhat.com. Also,
IP-configuration has been verified
??????? with another machine.
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2) Installing from CD
??? 
??????? Source:? Magazine "give-away-CD" with Redhat 5 distribution
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??????? Problems: First error is the "RPM install of bc failed: execution of
script failed" message. Then,
??????? when selecting the correct NIC from list (or any other 3com card for
that matter)
??????? I get the error "I can't find the device anyware on your system!".
When skipping, the
??????? install continues to the installation of the boot, which fails with
message "I cannot run
??????? /bin/insmod: No such file or directory".
??????? When cancelling this step, I get the "congratulations" message, and
machine reboots - but
??????? no OS is detected (I only have linux on this machine - or WILL have
linux at least:)
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??????? Attempts to solve problem: Tried different NICs as specified above. 
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PLEASE HELP ME OUT HERE!
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Kind regards,
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/Stefan