some of my gateway laptops refuse to install f11a i386

[Robert P. J. Day]

  i am having some of the strangest behaviour on my collection of
gateway mx7120 laptops.  since they're 64-bit amd athlon mobile
processors, i should theoretically be able to install either of 32- or
64-bit f11 alpha on them, no?

  however, over yesterday and today, i've found at least three of them
that will, under no circumstances, even *look* at the i386 version of
the install DVD and will boot to the hard drive, but will happily
install off the x86_64 version. i take that i386 install DVD, put in
what should be an identical laptop next to it, and it will install off
of it just fine.  i put it back in the original laptop, it's ignored.
what the heck?  and i now have at least three laptops that seem
utterly uninterested in the i386 f11alpha DVD.

  can this be a BIOS setting of some kind?  this doesn't seem
arbitrary or random, it's a very specific set of laptops that will
just ignore the i386 install DVD.  thoughts?

rday
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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry:
    Have classroom, will lecture.

http://crashcourse.ca                          Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
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