RE: Linux on Intel "Big Sur"

Luck, Tony
2007-12-10T17:11:26Z

> I happen to posses an old "Big Sur" machine manufactured by Intel, based
> around two Itanium (Merced) CPU's and a 460GX chipset. The machine is
> labeled as an "enginnering sample" (label:
> http://ishells.net/spy/itanium/DSC00873.jpg), and looks identical to the
> HP i2000 workstation (picture: http://ishells.net/spy/itanium/DSC00880.jpg).

I haven't booted kernels on BigSur/Merced based systems for a very long
time (3 years? perhaps more) ... and untested code very quickly turns into
non-working code :-(

> Do you reckon it is safe to update? What else would you suggest me to do
> about my machine to succeed with Linux installation?

You'd probably be a lot happier if you re-cycled this machine and found
a newer one (at least McKinley based). If you really want to continue
you might try to track down some install disks for a version of Linux
that is the same age as the machine (e.g. RedHat AS 2.1). At least these
are known to work on this h/w.

-Tony