epox 4g4a+ (i845g and hpt372) with kernel 2.4.x: Ok, now booting the kernel. hangs.

Hi,
I've got some problems with booting a 2.4.19 (and other 2.4 kernels). The system is a P4 2.0 Ghz Northwood, Epox 4G4A+ (i845g) with onboard HPT372 and Realtek LAN, 512 MB DDR Ram, 80 GB Seagate IDE Disk at IDE1 and a CDROM at IDE2. I am not using the HPT IDE Ports at this time (also tried with disabling the HPT in the BIOS.

Ok. Whenever i try to boot a 2.4 Kernel (i tried the ones provided by the Debian 3.0 boot cd, Knoppix boot cd and a p4 optimized gentoo kernel) It gets as far as:

Loading kernel..................
Loading rescue.gz....................................................................... ready.
Uncompressing Linux... Ok, now booting the kernel.

Then it hangs.
Is there a way to get more information what exactly it is doing before it hangs ?

Best Regards,
Justin Heesemann

dunno. but:

Had a similar problem once, though on different hardware. adding a mem=<some good amount less than you actually have> did the trick. after bios update, I could leave it off again.
(I think mem=480 could do in your case)

just a thought...

lge

Ok.. update:
I've testet some more kernels. I started with 2.4.0 which did boot, so did 2.4.2 and 2.4.3.
With 2.4.4 it won't boot. The last message is

Ok, now booting the kernel.

Which of the changes from 2.4.4 could cause this ?
Every other kernel higher then 2.4.4 that i tried (2.4.5, 2.4.10, 2.4.19, 2.5.31) are having the same problem.

I am completly stuck. the ram is ok, the onboard graphic adapter seems ok too (trying to boot with another agp card doesnt help)

Best Regards,
Justin Heesemann