Comment 4 for bug 513528

Okay, really getting discouraged here.

On arguably the world's smallest production server, a Compaq Armada 7730MT (Pentium MMX, 140MB) laptop, a clean install of 9.10 generic fails with similar symptoms as the OP i.e. "You need to load a kernel first".

Getting into the grub menu via the shift key at boot time (v1.97beta4 apparantly), I delete the line:

if [-n ${have_grubenv} ]; then save_env recordfail; fi

... to bypass a different known bug, but immediately get a:

  Booting a command list

error: cannot allocate real mode pages

This machine was happily running 8.04. Serves me right for pushing the envelope lol

Any/all insights welcome and appreciated.