On Monday December 10 2007 14:03:23 Andrew Zbikowski wrote: > Check for issues related to your ATA/SATA controller and kernel version. > > Are you installing on older hardware? You may want to dig around in > the advanced options when booting the installer. I think you can type > help at the boot prompt, or something. Don't recall exactly what the > option is... :) Indeed I am. It's an eleven year old Aptiva (yeah, I'm pretty much just doing it for the challenge). It is definitely the controller, I plugged in a controller card and ran the drives through it, and although it still hung it hung somewhere else. Now I just need to get specs for this old beast, because I don't know what kind of controller I have. If anyone can tell me where to find specs for old old old IBM machines, I'd really appreciate it (their website seems to be no help, but I might be missing the obvious). Also, for those following along at home, good sources of information that I've found include... the debian installer guide - http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/index.html (especially section 5.2 Boot Parameters) the linux boot prompt HOWTO - http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/BootPrompt-HOWTO.html best regards- p.