[ale] Compile & reboot

[tfreeman]

I've been reading the HOW-TO's, docfiles, et al, and the only thing I've
managed to do is confuse myself. 8-(. The challenge is this: I've got to
boot from dos, preferably from a dos floppy at this time, using loadlin. I
need/want to recompile so I get the soundblaster going again, and to get
the skill level up so I can start attaching other "stuff" to this machine.
So much for motivation.

The details currently are I'm running Red Hat 4.0 from a boot floppy
provided "as is" by Red Hat's support staff. The linux files involved are:
vmlz2018.krn (the kernal), inrd2018.img (? the initrd "ram disk"), and
linux.prm (the parameter file). I _think_ that I want to recompile the
vmlz2018.krn file, recompile the modules, and remake the inrd2018.img file
with the new modules. What seems to have me baffled is what to put into
the .img file, how to create it with those components, and what the more
important landmines are.

The hardware involved is a 33MHz 486 with 20Meg Ram, 900meg root disk at
/dev/sda1, 100meg swap on /dev/sda3, 1100meg data on /dev/sda2. There are
four dos partitions on sdb, a zip drive on sdc, and a cdrom for good
measure. The SCSI controller card is a Future Domain 16xx series.

I'll be happy to post files as requested, and I won't have trouble with
instructions which drop all the way back to "make mrproper" level. 

I'd like to get this challenge cleaned up and learned from, as the "linux
project list" seems to have 14 entries currently, most of which would
appear to depend on having a good kernal and modules support going.

Thanks for the education and assistance offered.