🚀 go-pugleaf

I own a i486 PC having two ide HDs and one CDROM with MSDOS 6.20 on
the C: drive (hda) and Linux (version 1.2.11) on the other.
I used the Trans-Ameritech Release 3 (April 1994) during the spring
of 1994 to initially install Linux on my machine.  I also installed
LILO to select between DOS and Linux during a reboot.  The CDROM is
drive E:.

Because lilo and MSDOS 6.20 produce "HD disk configuration error"
messages during some reboots, I am looking at loadlin v1.5 as an
alternative method for booting Linux.  As a test, I copied the
version e:\vmlinuz found on the CDROM to C:\vmlinuz.  The UNIX
commands cmp, wc, ls -l and sum all indicate that the files are
identical.  However, ...

When I use the following two commands from a DOS prompt,
     c:\loadlin\loadlin -v e:\vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb1 ro
     c:\loadlin\loadlin -v c:\vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb1 ro
                           ^_the only difference

only the first boots the Linux kernel.  The second command fails to
boot; giving the diagnostic:  "not an Image file."  If I repeat the
loadlin command after executing a "smartdrv /C" command, the screen
shows:
    Uncompressing Linux...
    unable to fill buffer
    -- system halted

I also get those messages when I try to boot other versions of the Linux
using loadlin.  All of these kernels boot via lilo.  Why does LOADLIN
have a problem loading the kernel image when the image file is on
the C disk but not when it is on the E disk?

If someone is using loadlin in a similar configuration, please
send a copy of your config.sys and autoexec.bat.  Any suggestion
that might help probe this problem is welcome.

Thank you,
Albert
P.S. Suggestions for fixing lilo are also welcome.