43p-140 install issues

[Mike Martin]

> > > I am begining to believe that there is some sort of hardware problem with your
> > > box or it is an upgraded version which was a -140 in it's previous life, but my
> > > -140 is rock solid with Leigh's 2.4.19 kernel - once it's up, that is.
> > > I will leave it running tonight to see what happens,

[snip]

> The machine was working fine under AIX when it was decomissioned. It
> had some issues with a disk going bad due to heat (blocked vents). But
> once they were cleared there were no issues. I am going to try the
> other machine. I'll keep my finger's crossed.
> 
> MikeMartin

An update (Sucess!!!):
After jogging some people's memory I found out that this machine has a
PCI token ring card (which I wasn't using) because the on-board
ethernet went flaky. This certainly helps explain my intermitent
network, and quite possibly the short up-times before crashing. As we
guessed - a hardware problem.

Is there any way (jumper ?) to disable the onboard ethernet? I may try
not loading the modules for it and see if the machine becomes stable.
Would a standard PCI ethernet card work as a substitute (likely won't
netboot)?

Now the success:
I put Leigh's boot floppy and the Woody root floppy (from
debian.yorku.ca mirror) into the second machine at noon today. By 1pm
I had a fully installed, configured and self-booting installation of
Woody on a 43p-140.

By 1:30 I had it re-pinned to "testing" and "dist-upgrad"ing. It was
finished and running great when I left work.

Since the machine is at work, I don't have much time to mess with it,
(since that's not my job!) but I will try in the next week to test
Sven's d-i disks on a second hard disk. It's the least I can do for
the help you've all given.

Thanks!
MikeMartin