Hendrik Boom via Dng said on Tue, 26 Oct 2021 23:15:15 -0400

>Chimaera didn't help, though the symptoms changed.
>I booted from the chimaera live desktop, and it started looking
>hopeful, but before much was running it had a kernel panic -- attempt
>to kill init. Yes, I checked the checksum on the download.
>And when I used chimaera to boot another computer (a Purism laptop) it
>worked flawlessly.

Just for fun --- is your video hardware nVidia? NVidia hardware, its
proprietary drivers, and its reverse-engineered FOSS drivers make all
sorts of nasty intermittent problems.

You can get a good, simple, modern Radeon card pretty cheap these days.
No good for gaming, but I watch videos with it just fine, and it has no
fan.

If replacing nVidea with Radeon doesn't work, I think you've ruled out
the video hardware, and you still have a nice Radeon for your next
build.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques