TinyCore 4.5.2 on a Compaq Armada 1590DT

[Compact]

TinyCore 4.5.2 on a Compaq Armada 1590DT ( P1-166Mhz, 80Mb ram) with Compact Flash 128Mb.

I don't know wether this is a bug. But I thought the best place to post is here.

I had to make a diagnostic partition first with the setup and diagnostic disks. Compaq made a sda3 partition as the first partition on a clean (dd/zero) CF (128mb) card. Then I made another partition sda1 and made it bootable. This partition is placed after diag-sda3. Installed TinyCore 4.5.2 on sda1 via another PC by extracting the iso and changing syslinux.cfg (or extlinux.conf). After booting TC I installed some applications via the web and saved changes. Everything was running fine on this PC. Took the CF card to the Compag Armada 1590DT and booting and loading is allright. But all I finally get is:

mkdir: can't create '/tce/optional': no such file or directory
chown: /tce: no such file or directory

and the $ prompt appears.
$ sudo fdisk -l lists no HD and /mnt is empty.
Also when I reduce the files to only the iso files or used both fat or ext. Always the same, above mentioned, warnings I get. Is there any solution for this or is this a bug ?

The cfg line looks like this:
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/boot/core.gz quiet tce=sda1 showapps pause

Also changing tce=sda1 to tce=UUID="F331-0783" doesn't change the error messages.

It would be nice if I could get TC running on this laptop for TC is really wonderfull. Thank you for TC.

Friendly Greetings, Compact

[Rich]

Hi Compact
When you had the card in the other PC and installed the applications, are you sure they were installed
to the card and not somewhere else?

[Compact]

Hi Rich,

They were all on the card. I also tried with only the iso-files later. Same result.

[Rich]

Hi Compact
If you remove the  tce=  boot code, does it work then?

[Compact]

Hi Rich,
Only the warnings disappear. But nothing seems to be loaded. I checked /usr/local/bin

[gerald_clark]

Your flash card interface may need a 'waitusb=10' boot option.
It may also be that the CF interface you have is not supported.

[curaga]

Please post the dmesg from the Compaq, if possible.

[Compact]

I'm using the IDE interface with a CF/IDE adapter. But al the same I tried usbwait=12 already without result. Compaq diagnostic gives CF up as a harddrive. I'm afraid the HD is not recognised by TC. Although TC is booting and loading from from HD this doesn't necesarily mean that TC also recognises where it is booting from. As far as my knowledge stretches it could be a hardware detection problem ?

I've attached dmesg. The end is because of saving dmesg to floppy.

[curaga]

Indeed, no mention at all of the ide controller. Do you know what chip it is, or if it works under some other distro? In that other distro's dmesg it should list the driver used.

[Compact]

Syslinux HDT and Miray pci-sniffer both give up:

Opti Inc. 82C825 - PCI bus master IDE controller (Firebridge 2)

The Compaq 1590DT has no usb port nor has it a boot option for usb in the bios.
I just tried out:
If I put a pcmcia usb2.0 controller card and a usb-stick in the cardslot (with no hd=cf)
TinyCore boots, loads and starts up very fine with no problem at all from usb (as far as I can see)
with a Plop bootmanager floppy.  (This is a very strong part from TC, not many distro's can boot this way)
I didn't try kexec booting from pcmcia-cf but perhaps this will also succeed ?
It's no solution for the problem, but surely a way to run TC on this laptop.

[curaga]

OK, that driver is marked as "very experimental" and so not enabled in our kernel, as that could risk your data.

If you'd like to do your own build, it's CONFIG_PATA_OPTI and CONFIG_PATA_OPTIDMA.

I didn't try kexec booting from pcmcia-cf but perhaps this will also succeed ?

No need for kexec, kernel+ínitrd on some medium and data on another is completely supported.

[Compact]

If this is no bug I must be sorry for posting here.

I didn't build my own kernel yet, but that time will come once. In the mean time I'll use usb and will try kexec booting from pcmcia-cf via ide-cf. In that case I don't have to re-compile with every version change.
Thank you very much for your clearness; advice and fast respons. For me this problem is solved.
TC is great.

Friendly Greetings, Compact

[Compact]

OK, that driver is marked as "very experimental" and so not enabled in our kernel, as that could risk your data.

Why was this driver implemented in Damn Small Linux then if this was too risky ?

Friendly Greetings, Compact

[curaga]

2.4 kernels used a different IDE layer, IIRC. Maybe the driver for this layer was stable. But even if it was unstable there too, I'm the wrong person to ask.