I'm trying to install Fedora on a really old (1999-2000) PC, even though I have set it to boot the CD/DVD drive first it wont boot from the CD, I know the CD 'im using is bootable, do you think that the CD might be too new or something?
Thanks!
Answer
Prior to about 1999, most computers were designed to boot only from a floppy or hard drive. CD Booting was still relatively new, and generally relied on the "El Torito" specification that was embedded into the BIOS, that would search an ISO 9660 record on a CD for a special boot sector and perform some emulation magic to get the darn thing booting. Most modern computers don't require any special emulation and "just work". Based on what you have stated, I am willing to bet you are in the category of troubled hardware. Also, not all bootable discs are created equally - so just because some work, doesn't even remotely imply that all should.
Your best bet is to see if there is some outside chance that a BIOS update is available for that motherboard.
Your next best bet is to custom bake some bootable goodness using ISOLINUX for use on a floppy disk (or even make a bootable CD image) which can get the computer up enough to pull down the rest of the Fedora install over the network.
For what it is worth, I find running something like Feather linux on hardware that old is generally far more productive than a full modern distribution like Fedora or Ubuntu. There is also a lightweight Fedora "spin" called LXDE that may even be a better fit.
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