Installing arch to old HP Desktop (HPE-341f, AMD) with a small SSD for system and some other drives. I have installed syslinux and followed instructions at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/syslinux.

The boot menu comes up nicely.When I select the boot option there is a flurry of text, console clears to black, cursor blinking ..

I am confident of the process up to the point of installing the boot manager. I have always used systemd-boot but this machine is an old BIOS piece so I can't use EFI.

So at the point of installing and configuring the bootloader I do this:

arch-chroot /mnt
...

#pacman -S syslinux
#cp /usr/lib/syslinux/bios/*.c32 /boot/syslinux/
#extlinux --install /boot/syslinux
#dd bs=440 count=1 conv=notrunc if=/usr/lib/syslinux/bios/mbr.bin of=/dev/sdc

# ls /boot/syslinux/*.c32 | wc -l
     60

Partitioning. I understand that msdos type is mbr without any modification so...

**fdisk -l /dev/sdc**
    Disk /dev/sdc: 223.57 GiB, 240057409536 bytes, 468862128 sectors
    Disk model: KINGSTON SA400S3
    Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
    Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
    I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
    Disklabel type: dos
    Disk identifier: 0x712df4f8
    
    Device     Boot   Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
    /dev/sdc1  *       2048   1050623   1048576   512M 83 Linux
    /dev/sdc2       1050624 468862127 467811504 223.1G 83 Linux
    

syslinux.cfg in /boot/syslinux I am using the UUID of /dev/sdc2 (boot is on /dev/sdc1)

**syslinux.cfg**

    UI menu.c32
    PROMPT 0        # Set to 1 if you always want to display the boot: prompt
    MENU TITLE Boot Menu
    TIMEOUT 50
    DEFAULT arch
    
    LABEL arch
        LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux
        APPEND root=UUID="17a9c599-b562-4dba-bda4-22b9ef81a60e" rw
        INITRD ../initramfs-linux.img
    
    LABEL fallback
        MENU LABEL Fallback
        LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux
        APPEND root=/dev/sdc2 rw
        INITRD ../initramfs-linux-fallback.img