I'm having difficulty booting up antiX-M8.2 with the live CD on two old desktop computers (a Dell Dimension L466cx originally equipped with Windows 98 and an IBM NetVista originally equipped with Windows 2000). I've tried antiX-M8.2 on two different laptops (one of which is 11 years old) and had no difficulty whatsoever.

When I try to boot up, I get the"Undefined mode number: 317" message.

Then I get a long series of SQUASHFS errors.

An attempt at configuring the Xorg graphical display is attempted but doesn't work. I'm asked for the login and password in a bizarre command line environment. After I log in, I have no idea how to navigate this bizarre command line environment. The commands"reboot","shutdown","powerdown", and"poweroff" are not recognized. When I control-alt-delete to try to get out, I get an endless loop of"mixer, /etc/rc6.d/K19aumix:163:expr:not found". The only way out is to turn off the computer.

I tried adding the"ide=nodma" and"acpi=off" boot codes, but I still had the undefined mode number, SQUASHFS, the bizarre command line, and the endless loop of"mixer, /etc/rc6.d/K19aumix:163:expr:not found".

Why isn't the antiX live CD booting up on these two old desktops even though I had no problem with the two laptops I tried? What's the mechanism?

Try using vga=788 and/or vesa option.

Did you burn the cd at slow speed and DAO? (Some) Old desktop cd readers have problems with the compression so x4 when burning is advised.

Alternatively, if you have a spare partition, or can create one (it only needs to be 600MB), you could try a fromiso install from an iso file on the spare hard drive.

What OS is on those desktops? Can you get any linux installed?

I always burn CDs at the slowest possible speed for best quality. I have no idea what DAO is or how to tell if the CD burning program is using it.

I have been able to boot up Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, and Ubuntu on these old desktops.

Somehow, I just managed to get the antiX live CD to boot up on one of these old desktops. I simply inserted the live CD and did nothing. Before, I pressed the space bar at the"Undefined mode number: 317" message to continue. I

So what exactly does"Undefined mode number: 317" mean? What do those options mean? The only thing I did different was that I didn't touch anything while booting up the antiX live CD.

That message refers to the vga graphics, which is why the vga=788 option in the boot grub menu should boot ok without the message.

It turned out that the problem was using a rewriteable CD. Apparently, the CD drives of these two old desktop computers is sensitive to something. antiX Linux booted up just fine with read-only CDs even though I had problems when booting up with rewriteable CDs. Now I understand why it is often recommended to burn Linux ISO files to CD-Rs instead of CD-RWs. That said, I don't understand why certain CD drives would have difficulty with CD-RWs but not CD-Rs. Even more perplexing is why other distros (Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, and Ubuntu) on CD-RWs worked fine on these same computers while antiX has to be on a CD-R.

A good way to burn isos in CD-RW is using DAO or SAO mode. In linux: If you have more than one drive, first to find out the device names, then for instance