Good day,

Using a fresh-written SL.53.031809.DVD.i386.disc1.iso
linux rescue ends up fast at:

running /sbin/loader
[loading ata_piix driver] (on the blue screen)
loader received SIGSEGV! Backtrace:
[0x8048cf4] (several of those, different hex)
Install exited abnormally [1/1]
blah blah
you may safely reboot your system

Can anyone else reproduce this? SL4 rescue is fine; SL5.3 not
(don't have time to try SL5.2/1/0)

The DVD image was downloaded from

http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/53/iso/i386/DVD/SL.53.031809.DVD.i386.disc1.iso

and the md5sum is correct. It's the same result on any machine tried
with several writ SL5.3 DVDs, so not specific to hardware or DVD.
Is there something I can do/try to make it work? (Otherwise have to 
retain SL4 DVDs for rescue mode) (used yesterday on office SL5.3 
Dell laptop to reinstall grub after badness - whew)

Grateful for advice.

BTW, in the page 
https://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/5x/53/limitations
it says

"smartctl: 
The smartctl tool cannot properly read SMART parameters from SATA devices."

smartctl for SATA disks looks to work fine on all our SL5.x boxen (the
single SL5.2 box requires -d ata, SL5.3 don't, it just works)