Nick Andre wrote to All on 11-02-1999

NA> Hi!
NA> 
NA> I'm trying to install OS/2 Warp 3.0 Redspine on a friends 
NA> system. He's running 
NA> a 486DX/33Mhz all-ISA board, 400mb Quantum HD, standard ISA/FDD
NA> controller,  and just a VGA card installed.
NA> 
NA> OS/2 starts to boot okay on Disk 0, but after the "Loading; please
NA> wait"  message appears, the screen goes blank, and the system stops.
NA> I have no idea  whats going on, (Alt+F2 doesn't seem to work on the
NA> installation disks). I've  tried everything I could think of
NA> (disabling cache, etc), but to no avail.
NA> 
NA> Any ideas/suggestions?

Lots of them, but let's try and solve the problem first.  Questions
to be answered: do you know that the board actually works more than a
few minutes after bootup?  What's the drive interface (I assume ATA,
otherwise known as IDE)?  What's the video card (chip set, manf., etc)?
 Are there ANY other cards in the system besides the video and disk
controller?  Are your boot floppies good (make another set from the
CDROM)? How much RAM is installed? What kind of mouse and how is it
installed (darned near mandatory to have a mouse)? Last but not least,
the brand and rev level of the ROM BIOS (from the bootup screen)?

There are a lot of particular problems that might (or might not) be
identified from the above info.  In general, you look to have started
right.  Just to refresh your memory, disable BOTH internal and external
cache.  If you have DOS available, boot it with HIMEM.SYS in it's
config.sys and let that do a rough memory test.   In the BIOS setup,
set everything as slow as it will go - wait states, etc.  My first
inclination would be to verify that the floppies are indeed good since
that's usually the main source of most of my install problems and the
fact that ALT-F2 shows nothing points to a failure to read the floppy.

Step one done.  Now come back with some particulars.

Will Honea 
--- Maximus/2 2.02