[ilugd]: old p120

[Robins Tharakan]

hi,   i have this old p-120 on which i wish to install *any* version of linux... a recent motherboard replacement has somehow made any linux booting impossible...(i did try lilo too...!) the system just gets hung after an "init" message during bootup, or at the max it reaches the hard-disk detection portion.   i suspect that the motherboard has the standard 1024sector problem that i read sometime ago...   but what i intend to ask is that, shouldnt a partition (about the size ) of 600Mb on a 4Gb harddisk with no other partition on it, work ? i did try this but failed at exactly the same place, where the bootup gave  hd0  ....   is there something else that is needed to take care of the 1024sector problem?   i dont need a full blown system... just a simple network aware proxy... thats all... so the size of the partition isnt really a problem... just that it still doesnt boot!!   tia   affly robins