Re: 2.4.x kernels hang before uncompressing

[Jon Burgess]

>   We have a Tri-M PC-104 system with a Cyrix ZF486 processor that (in
>addition to being painfully slow building kernels) refuses to boot any
>2.4.x kernels.
...
> It DOES appear to finish loading, because it outputs a linefeed after
>the line of dots in 'Loading linux....'

I experienced a similar problem with another National Geode board and traced the
problem back to the place where the kernel reads the BIOS memory map. I fixed it
by disabling the newer BIOS memory routines by adding '#define
STANDARD_MEMORY_BIOS_CALL' to linux/arch/i386/boot/setup.S. Alternatively try
adding it to the flags in linux/arch/boot/Makefile, since the compressed/misc.c
has similar #ifdef's.

If that fails try upgrading the BIOS or check out the ZFLinux web site
http://www.zfmicro.com/

     Jon Burgess