OS problem

[starwardude]

 For the past 3 days, I've been trying to load an operating system on to one of my spare computers.

It is an older model, running 2 Pentium III processors, both rated @ 500MHz, 320 MB of RAM (2 128MB sticks, 2 32MB sticks), and an 8GB IDE HDD.

First I tried ReactOS, and a number of trunk versions until finding out that it doesn't fully support multi-processor operation. Then I tried Debian, but for some reason it doesn't want to fully install (to be edited for clarity later). Then I tried a liveCD of dyne:bolic (because it's what I had laying around at the time) and it didn't boot up either.

I've used fdisk to wipe and rebuild the partitions on the drive I-don't-know-how-many times in the past three days. Is that the problem? I don't know what to do at this point. What should I do? What am I doing wrong?

[Aegis]

http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/CS-007880.htm

FROM THE INTEL PAGE ABOVE

Processors
Recommendations for integration of dual processor systems
 
 In dual processor systems, the processor with the lowest feature-set, as determined by the CPUID Feature Bytes, must be the Bootstrap Processor (BSP). The BSP is the processor that starts the boot process. In the event of a tie in feature-set, the tie should be resolved by selecting the BSP as the processor with the lowest stepping as determined by the CPUID instruction. For example, when mixing b0 and c0 the b0 stepping is the lowest.


Be sure to use an operating system that supports dual processing. Currently, Microsoft* Windows NT*, Windows 2000, Windows XP* Professional and some versions of Linux support dual processing. Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me and Windows XP Home do not. If you only have one processor installed when you install Windows NT or Windows 2000, you will need to change the HAL to a dual processing HAL when you start using more than one processor. For Linux to support multiple processors, you may have to recompile the kernel. Check with the documentation that comes with the OS.

Note: for the software to make use of dual processing, the software has to be multi-threaded and it must be running on an operating system that supports dual processing.


If you use a dual processing motherboard and you don't use all of the processors, some motherboards require having a special terminator card in the empty processor slot(s). If the motherboard is self-terminating and you are having problems booting, you may try inserting a special terminator or a matched processor in the empty slot or socket to verify that the self-termination is actually working properly.


Check the BIOS Settings. Some boards may have options to retest or enable/disable processors.

I wish I knew more about Linux versions so I can advise you.  I'll poke around and see what I can find...