Suggestions for getting my PC to boot?

[presotto@plan9.att.com presotto@plan9.att.com]

Have you checked that Linux and/or DOS can read the disk1
floppy?  In particular, do they see an a:\386\init?

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To:	9fans@cse.psu.edu
Date:	Fri, 8 Sep 1995 19:49:50 -0400
From:	Troy Smith <tdsmith@idir.net>
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Organization: Internet Direct Communications -- (913) 841-2200
Subject: Suggestions for getting my PC to boot?
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I'm trying to install the 4-disk set on my PC, but am dying during 
the boot process.  I've tried three different versions of disk1 and 
used four different methods (raw floppy boot, running b.com from 
a fully-loaded DOS, running from the recommended bare config, and 
running from a minimal DOS boot (hitting l-shift @boot)), but it 
always dies in the same place with the same message:

2053 free pages, 8212K bytes, swap 45972K, highwater 408K, headroom 508K
CPU is a 66 MHz Intel486DX (cpuid: ax 400 dx 0)
fs...time...boot: /386/init: file does not exist
panic: boot process died: unknown

Then a table of 25 hex values followed by "exiting".

My system is an AMD 486DX2/66 with 12Mb RAM, 256K cache, two Conner
CFS420A hard disks, Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428, and various other things.
My motherboard is one of those strange ones with both types of SIMM 
slots (2 72-pin and 4 30-pin), with all 6 slots filled.  Linux has 
run on this system, so it can't be too bad.

Any hints on what would cause the preceeding will be appreciated, 
even if it means that I can't run it.

Thanks,

Troy Smith

P.S.  As an additional test, I pulled the 4 1Mb SIMMS to see if that 
      would help.  No luck.