hi everyone!

i recently finished putting together a new machine and am having problems installing the operating system (mandrake 8.1). i'll tell you about the computer first before i get into the installation problems:

athlon xp 1700
msi k7n420 pro (nforce chipset) motherboard
onboard video/audio
256M ddr ram
30gig hdd

now when i try to install the os, i get as far as the first setup screen. it asks me for install or advanced options. when i click install, either the screen goes blurry and i have to reboot, or it tells me i don't have enough memory to install kernal version. when i tell linux mem=256M it just repeats the same message. when i try to use an advanced option, the screen just goes fuzzy.

i've installed linux on other computers on the network in our labs using the same disks and it went smoothly every time, so i know the disks are ok; i put win98se onto my computer to make sure all the hardware was working, and it works perfectly. i've tried formatting the hard drive and i've used two different boot disks and nothing seems to work. mandrake's website doesn't say anything about my hardware not being supported.

thanks in advance, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!