mandrake i586?

what does the i586 mean ... i think i dled the wrong one for A64s

this is irrelative but...i dled mandrake and had problems....if it keeps giving u mysterious problems about not detecting ur HD and crap...use the second (non-default) kernel install...

It means you need at least a i586 class CPU to run it: you have to have at least a Pentium.

i586 should run fine on an Athlon64 based system. If you want a Linux distro that takes full advantage of your AMD64 hardware, you'd have to download the "AMD64" version.

From your other threads I have noticed you're using VMware.... you should always use i586/i686 distro versions with VMware since it's "virtual machine" is based around a Pentium class system.