generic mid tower, micronics invader atx motherboard, phoenix bios (1997), no usb boot option, sony scsi cdrom, adaptec 2940 UW scsi controller, 2 UW scsi hard drives. I get the error

Looking for pup_save.2fs file on sda1
ERROR, cannot find Puppy on idecd boot media
PUPMODE=1 PDEV=1
Exited to initial ramdisk commandline

I've tried adding puppy PMEDIA=scsicd on the boot line after the error, but no go. It looks to me like the scsi drives aren't being found at all. When I plug in a usb, it is found and I can mount it.

I don't get it. Out of about 10 different distros, only 1 (Dream Linux 2.1) has been able to boot successfully on this machine. I've run NT 4.0, XP, Win2000 Pro and Win2003 Server on the same box with no issues whatever.

I thought Linux was supposed to be the best way to run an old machine.

It is, but you'll need a distro that has solid SCSI support built in to the kernel. Puppy does not have SCSI support built in, it's too small to support such a wide range of hardware. In your case I would recommend trying Vector Linux, the install CD (and possibly the liveCD too) has SCSI built right in.

Cheers,
Mark

Here's my scenario: I've been working primarily as a Windows admin for the last 11 years with some OS/2, AS/400 and Netware admin thrown in. Currently I'm working as aonsultant testing multiple NAS storage vendor solutions and am trying to "temp" install linux on 15-18 machines running Windows XP. I need the linux because most of the servers we're testing connecting to the NAS are linux based. I seem to need a distro with at least a 2.6.17 kernel because anything older won't connect properly to the SUN X4500 NAS NFS. Lots of distros work correctly at work, because the machines are all ide based, but at home I only have the previously mentioned old PPro 200 with older scsi hardware scavenged after server upgrades. I'm trying to use that machine to test multiple machine concurrent task scripts. Although I'm learning to like linux, I am surprised at the somewhat limited hardware support of the various distros and, as I read various forums, the amount of tweaking (and willingness to do it) required to get all the flavors of linux running. I've been looking for ONE distro to use both at home and work, but so far haven't found it. I will try vector. Thanks.

If you're used to Windows then it may seem to you that Linux involves more tweaking. This perception may fail to take into account the fact that a lot of Windows tweaking has become second nature to you, and faded into invisibility. I almost tore my hair out the last time I tried to get Windows to run on a Compaq desktop - it required a lot of mutually incompatible drivers and I never succeeded.

The other main factor is that Linux is so easy to tweak that a lot of people do tweaking that isn't necessary.

Now, given your more fully stated requirements, I would look at one of the big distros (big as in "the big guys" rather than "heavyweight"), such as Slackware (choose the right kernel!), Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora. Zenwalk may also be a good choice, based as it is on Slack (like Vector) but with a default 2.6 kernel.

Email me if you want more detailed discussion (this forum is for Puppy, after all). My address is my forum handle at yahoo.co.uk

Cheers,
Mark