need help with install problem

[Edward]

Rich Coco wrote:

> It almost makes sense to me that the boot.iso is not a bootable
> media becuse i would not have expected the boot files to be in a
> directory (isolinux) but at the top level! I almost wonder if the boot.iso
> file that came with the first Fedora disk was incorrectly put together.

Sorry - that is just plain wrong. I just used that boot.iso yesterday to 
install Fedora 2, and the directory structure you have described is 
indeed correct. Mine booted properly.

> 
> i do not know why the pc will not boot off the zip disk.
> the bios has support for it, since it lets me choose 'zip100' from
> a menu of devices to check at boot time. my guess is that it's because
> it's a USB device and not an IDE device?

Yes, that is VERY likely.

  anyway, all my USB related
> bios setting are enabled, so i do not think it's a setting. maybe my bios
> simply does not support booting from USB devices, period.

Booting USB devices is tricky. All the Intel D845GEBVL boards I've 
worked with CLAIMED to be USB bootable, but I never got it working till 
only recently a BIOS update arrived for that motherboard, I tried it, 
and it worked flawlessly. This is after tearing my hair out for a full 
day or so trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.

All the newer D865PERLL boards I've used have always worked flawlessly.

All I'm trying to say is that some mainboards just don't seem to 
implement the USB booting code properly.

> 
> so...what do i do? any ideas?
> 
> eg, is there a way for me to split the diskboot.image across multiple
> floppies and boot up like that?

Nope.

> 
> (for the record, the target PC is currently running RH 9.0 as well.
> so i tried copying the 4 Fedora ISO files to a 2nd hard drive on that
> PC and, using my trusty RH 9.0 floppy boot.img, i booted up the PC and
> tried to perform an install from the local hard drive. however, the RH
> install stuff was too smart for that to work since it would not recognize
> the Fedora ISOs. Not surprising i suppose and maybe not even smart on my 
> part,
> but i was/am getting desperate.)

You can also try Smart Boot Manager at http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/ to 
create a boot floppy that can boot multiple devices from a menu. I've 
had some success using this in the past when CD-ROM booting was flaky on 
a particular PC.

Regards,
Ed.