Well, I've thrown in the towel for now on this!

The crowd says: "Boooo."

Linux is back up; Since I have some [other] BSD machines handy,
I will reattack this situation at my leisure, probably with a
little hack in the kernel, mostly some printk's and maybe reading
some fine manuals re IDE spec, etc. "The truth is out there."

My profound thanks go out to all who were so kind as to respond.

For the next chapter in my saga, watch the pmax lists :)

The conclusions from my experience seem to be:

	1) Linux installs better because it accepts the DOS view of
	things. This is true on IDE machines with this stupid LBA scheme.

	2) BSD installs better on old junk (386SX... I've gotten it up
	on a 40MB IDE and on a 80MB MFM, with NFS /usr's no sweat, 
	both first time successes). Linux choked and croaked on these
	boxes. (Not enough mem, "bus errors", blah blah. Also Linux
	doesn't support BAD144 forwarding on clunky old MFM/ESDI drives.)
	NetBSD is running like a champion on this old "useless" hardware.
	BSD seems to get "tricky" on middle-aged junk. Don't know about
	modern junk. "Modern" around here means 486/33.

	3) Men with money should buy Buslogic SCSI controllers and Real
	Drives.  Men with sense and money shouldn't have bought PC's in 
	the first place :) Stupid brain-dead bus....

	4) Intel PC architecture needs a Free boot monitor, like Sun's,
	old Vaxes, etc. This should be ROM-able, in that empty BIOS
	socket :), and floppable.  Any FORTH hackers game for this?

Again, thanks to all! In particular to R. Ma, R. Khoo and Patrick!
(If your name isn't mentioned, it's an oversight!)

Dave Vanecek
-- 
   "But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in
   those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous." 
   			-- Gibbon