LH4 hangs after POST

[Christopher Slater-Walk_1]

I have an LH4 with 2x9.1GB SCSI in RAID1, Netraid 2M, 2xPII Xeon/400, 1GB RAM. There are NO IDE devices. An HP network card in the top PCI slot. Also an Advansys SCSI adaptor in the lowest 32-bit PCI slot which connects to a CD-ROM drive and a CD writer.

I was trying to boot from Fedora Linux Core3 install CD and getting a kernel panic (the kernel panic is NOT the problem but just part of the story!) So I thought I would try to boot the same CD from an IDE CD drive, so I connected up a spare IDE cd-rom, and booted from that. But still a kernel panic.

Next thing I tried was removing the Advansys SCSI adapter and booting from the IDE CD-ROM, but still the same problem.

So I replaced the Advansys adaptor and removed the IDE CD-ROM, and now I am back to the original config.

However, now what happens is: the server goes through POST and no errors are reported. All drives are detected correctly; after the POST summary screen there is a single beep indicating (I think) an error-free POST. However, once the POST summary screen disappears, I am left with a flashing cursor in the top left corner of the screen, and the server hangs there. No keyboard keys work at all. I can't boot from floppy, CD or hard disk (so I can't flash the BIOS or anything). The only way to get any action is to reset, and then I end up at the same thing.

So does anyone have any idea how to proceed from here?

[Christopher Slater-Walk_1]

Cleared CMOS, all OK now.