Linux install hangs hard on kernel load

[JD Austin IV]

A K5 is a souped up 486 that although they say it's equivalent to
a low end pentioum, it cannot process pentium instructions.
Most distributions are optimized for i686 processors which doesnt include
K5 processors.  I know that Debian will work since I just loaded potato
on a 486.  If you don't want to load debian you might check slackware,
to see if that is compiled for 386 or not.  Mandrake 7.0 has a version that
is compiled for 386's also.

Good luck :)

JD

> Attempting to load Linux on a friend's AMD K5 box... pretty much every
> distro we tried (Mandrake 8.1, 8.0, 7.1, Redhat 7.0, 6.0 -- okay we
> didn't try Debian or SuSe)... you get the screen (F1 for help or Enter
> to load), press Enter and it says, "Loading cdrom.img" or "loading
> boot.img" ... prints three dots and hangs, even pressing NumLock
> doens't blink the light.
>
> The only one that would load was an ancient icky version of Storm
> Linux.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> \\/
>
>
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