MX Linux Forum

I've been away travelling for a couple of weeks, so wasn't able to follow up on the earlier posts and advice in this thread. But I'm back now; and an update may be of interest to those who have been involved in the discussions so far.

The news is - there is some progress, although I can't explain ...

Thanks FullScale4Me , I'm prepared to try almost any uncomplicated experiment to get this old computer functioning normally.

I try to understand what I'm doing, but a lot of this is the proverbial steep learning curve.

However your suggestions on managing flags in GParted look pretty ...

Thanks FullScale4Me for your ramblings...

Just a quick response on the thoughts you offer.

The subject of boot flags, LBA etc is way above my pay grade. I had a look at the Wikipedia explanation of LBA. It might as well have been written in Chinese or Greek. I couldn't begin to understand it. It ...

Your QSI says you have a 64-bit processor. Can you install the 64-bit version of MX Linux or does it have to be 32-bit for some other reason?


Well, trawglodyte , I'm not sure how this suggestion relates to the problem of not being able to boot at all. But - for the record - I have in the past ...

Not really a progress report - but an update, and an apology.

I opened up the computer casing again, to access the hard drive. And I successfully moved the jumper from pins 1 and 2 (the default Cable-Select setting), to pins 5 and 6.

Connected it all up again, and powered on to boot up.

Sadly ...

**Try setting the HDD as Master: jumper pins 5 and 6**
ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
Older PATA drives, if not configured correctly for master/slave (master, slave, single, cable-selected), can cause serious problems.


I can see how to do this, Gabriel_M , and I'm willing to try it.

But what ...

When you replaced the HDD did you also replace the ribbon cable as I suggested?


Nope.... didn't have (and couldn't find locally) another ribbon cable. So all I did was wiggle the connections, unplug, try to get rid of any dust and dirt etc, and reconnect.

Thinking more generally about the ...

sudo nano /etc/default/grub
This would open grub with administrative powers in the nano text editor. Is that what you were trying to do?


The truthful answer, j2mcgreg , is that I really don't know! I was simply following the suggestion put forward by Gabriel_M , in the hope that this was ...

A quick follow up. Without messing with the jumpers, I booted into a Live session, went looking for the file /etc/default/grub, found it, and - I think - successfully added the two new code-entries "sudo nano /etc/default/grub" and "insmod = ide generic". Saved and exited.

Then in the terminal ...

Thanks again Gabriel_M ... but unfortunately I don't think I have moved anything forward.

The jumper is on CS (cable select), which is shown as the default setting. That is to say, it links pins 1 and 2, according to the diagrams I have found.

As I understand it - and as shown in the initial ...