Re: installing on an old 486

[John Anderson]

Your CD-ROM could be the culprit.  I believe that Debian works off of any
ATAPI compatible CD-ROM drive.  With other distributions (Redhat) which I
used before, my computer would freeze if I started through DOS.  Is there
any way you can boot directly from the CD-ROM in the BIOS setup program?  
If not, make a boot floppy and try that.  The instructions on how to make
a boot floppy are at the Debian website, I believe under "Download"
Installation or something close to that.