Help with Installing Linux on a NEC PC 9821V12 machine.

[Antony Stace <antony@example.com>]

Hi

I have been trying to install Linux on a NEC PC-9821V12 without
much success.

The machine came with a copy of Japanese Windows 95 on it.  While this
was on the machine I made a floppy boot disk using Windows 95 and copied
the
appropriate drivers onto it to get the CDROM working if I needed it.  I
then proceeded to format the harddrive.
After doing this
I tried to boot the machine with a boot disk with the boot image from a
Redhat
6.0 disk, no luck, the machine just spun the floppy a few times and then
left me with a black screen.  I then tried to boot with a English
Windows
95 boot disk, again same thing.   

The boot disk which I made with Japanese Windows 95 does work.  However
I tried to install an English version of Windows 95 on it,  I changed to
the
CDROM and typed in setup, nothing happened, the setup program doesn't
seem to
run, if I try and install the Japanese version of Windows 95 it does
work.

The other thing which I cannot work out is that there does not seem to
be
any BIOS program that the user can use.  When it boots it simply
displays a 
memory test to the screen and then tries to boot the floppy followed by
the
Hard drive in that order.  


Can someone please tell me whats going on and how I can install linux on
this
machine.

Any help appreciated

Cheers

Tony