Suggested by various questions on the net and private mail,
e.g., by Lily, lbliao@alumni.caltech.edu, and by Pierre Frenkiel,
frenkiel@cdfap2.in2p3.fr. In March 1995 they asked:
`When I boot Linux I get the message:
Calibrating delay loop.. ok - 23.96 BogoMips
failed
Where/why has the calibration delay loop failed?'
It didn't fail. If it had failed the text would have been
Calibrating delay loop.. failed
What likely did fail was a driver for some gadget which you may not have in your machine. Just after calculating the BogoMips rating all device drivers are initiated. First the SCSI devices, then Net devices, etc. Any failure is duly reported. Noteworthy is the AHA152x driver. Other effects of failing drivers (and not of failing BogoMips calculations) are systems crashes, long waits, and complete system locks.
Since Linux 1.2 many error messages have improved, so upgrade to at least that version to find out which particular driver it is that is failing.