6500 install hell

[Nathan A. McQuillen]

OK, folks. I've been feeling pretty competent this last year or so, but
this one has me snookered.

I was recently given a 6500/250 with 32MB RAM and the standard WD 4GB HD.
I figured, hey, this was never much of a Mac, let's get YDL on it post
haste. And there my troubles began.

0. Stage directions: I'm using a known-good burn of the Fuji ISO. Internal
SCSI CD-ROM.  MacOS 8.0 on an external SCSI drive, BootX. Machine has been
cleaned and de-gunked, all connections secured, MacOS ran for 36 hours
with no failures. This lulls me into a false sense of security, for the
moment I install BootX, the kernel, and the ramdisks and hit that little
button:

1. Graphical installer wouldn't bring up X. This was NOT A PROBLEM since I
don't use the graphical much anyway. But:

2. Text-only install runs -- or so I think. Partitioning goes smoothly,
installer then chugs away at the default dev. workstation install for *24
HOURS* (can you spot the first sign of trouble?), seems to finish
unpacking and installing, then freezes. Cannot switch consoles. Leave it
for a few hours, reboot.

3. I have a half-baked install on the WD drive, but I can't tell what's
screwed up and what isn't -- much is missing from /etc/ and I shudder to
think what else is gone. So I try to install again. THings happen, right?

4. Second install fails in the same manner.

5. OK. At this point, I begin suspecting hardware. I swap out the WD drive
for a 30GB Maxtor, pull the internal SCSI devices, add my trusty
Matsushita external CD-R, and boot again.

6. BootX begins giving me address errors unless I start up with extensions
off and then boot Linux from the BootX app. Cannot do it on startup.

7. Having done so, the installer stalls on partitioning: first few
partitions set up OK, then silence... switching consoles and typing 'ps'
or anything else gives me a 'Terminated...' message in the installer and a
reboot.

8. I am stymied. Not enough RAM? I thought I could install easily with
32MB... am I remembering this wrong? Or is it bad RAM? I have no EDO DIMMs
to swap out and I'm not sure this machine would be worth the cost of
buying a new stick to test... A bad MLB? Definitely not worth it. But why
did the first install run, and why did the process clearly *degenerate*,
going from a slow but steady first install to now failing even to
partition? Has my CD gone bad? Did the government just want us to *think*
laser rot was a myth? Or is it simply karma, kismet, or dumb bad luck?

Any ideas?

Thanks, all. You'se the best.

- Nathan McQuillen