okay first thing i started messing around with the zip/bigslack and i could boot just fine to both of them from the boot disk...but when i use the .bat file they inckude it 
fails during loading. I dont know whats up with that it dont make sense....so when i found out i could boot from the zipdisk i unzipped bigslack and booted into it but it 
wasn't working right most likely because of some of the files not being unzipped(i got a few warnings when unzipping them) i will try pulling everything out installing 
one of the fresh distro's. Also everytime i try to install mandrake it says something about installation aborted abnormally and it  just stops and shutsdown...it doesn't say 
why it failed or anything.

11/2/01 9:56:39 AM, "Thomas Mondoshawan Tate" <phoenix@psy.ed.asu.edu> wrote:

>On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 12:19:24AM -0700, Richard L. Proctor wrote:
>> On Thursday 01 November 2001 10:53 pm, you wrote:
>> > okay i had an old p1 133 mhz computer and i couldn't get linux installed on
>> > it for some reason(hardware related) and EBo was gonna help me out with it
>> > but something unfortunate happened to that box :( My friend hooked me up
>> > with another box it also has a p1 133 mhz and i dont know what board it
>> > has, but i cant get linux installed on this either, most of the hardware is
>> > same as old one(HDD, ram, floppy, cdrom, NIC, sound, video etc...). So my
>> > question is does anyone know where i can get some old hardware that will
>> > work in this box that will work with linux, i am pretty sure it has
>> > something to do with either the HD or the video card. okay i just
>> > remembered this one utility that inventorys your pc and tells you
>> > everything so i will list the important stuff.
>> >
>> > main circuit board: BIOS: Award Software 4.50PG 09/07/95
>> > video: S3 Trio32/64 PCI (732/764) [Display adapter]
>> > HDD: Generic IDE hard disk drive (2.15 GB) -- drive 0 - i happen to remeber
>> > this being a fujitsu but i cant remember which model
>> >
>> > if anyone knows why those wouldn't work or where i can get stuff to replace
>> > them(cheaply if possible) i would appreciate it. BTW so far i have tried to
>> > install SuSE, mandrake, and zipslack and bigslack
>> 
>> Try RedHat
>
>Well... that's a rather counterproductive statement, isn't it? He's having
>problems with the Linux kernel and/or a hardware device -- not the
>distribution. Trying yet another distribution won't have much of a
>difference, I'll wager. Besdies, he's tried zipslack and bigslack
>(typicially v2.0 to v2.2 of the Linux kernel), and SuSE and Mandrake
>(typicially v2.2 to v2.4 of the Linux kernel), which would logicially prove
>that it's a hardware issue, NOT a software issue.
>
>So... My suggestion is that you pull out all non-essential parts from the
>computer and attempt to boot one of the distros -- doesn't matter which one,
>as long as it doesn't reboot, you'll know it's one of the cards you pulled
>out. If it does the same rebooting thing, chances are it's a core part of
>the system hardware.
>
>It sounds to me like it's awfully like a memory problem. Try downloading a
>memory testing program (memtest86 comes to mind) and checking it.
>
>One question: is this a hand-built machine, or a prebuilt one? If it's
>prebuilt, what is the model number and manufacturer of the machine?
>
>-- 
>Thomas "Mondoshawan" Tate
>phoenix@psy.ed.asu.edu
>http://tank.dyndns.org
>