Other Help Topics :: Booting DSL on ZF Micro ZFx86 Chip

I've used DSL before and I love it, but I'm trying to get it to boot now on a ZF Micro "PC on a chip." It's an IA32 compatible 100MHz chip, and so far the only distro I've been able to get running is iTuner Minibox, but it's a little lacking and I'd prefer to get DSL working. I've tried Debian, Fedora and Slackware and none of them will boot, generally having similar problems.

When I boot up from CD, if I just run dsl with no options, it loads two compressed images (the kernel and initrd I would guess), and I get a blank screen immediately after. If I try it in text mode (dsl 2) it does the same thing. If I try "lowram" I get a blank screen with a cursor blinking.

Any ideas on what the problem could be?

How much ram does this machine have?

Have you tried the "minimal" or "failsafe" cheatcodes?

Not familiar with zf micro systems, so a full specs list would be nice too.

-J.P.

Thanks for the reply. I tried the minimal option and still got a blank screen. If I try "failsafe" it shows:

Loading linux24...........
Loading minirt24.gz......
Ready.

And a blinking cursor underneath that. That's also exactly what I get when I try to install Debian or Slackware.

Here's a link to the specs for the chip:
ZFx86 Specifications

Our system has 64MB RAM.

original here.