It took a long time but I have finally got The Poor Man's install of Knoppix 6.3 DVD to boot!

Rymbeke's minirt from Knoppix 6.2.1 WAS OK. The problem lay in the boot codes I used. In previous versions I did not have to specify a screen boot code. I had a look in the isolinux configuration file on the DVD and noticed a reference to vga=791. I tried this on my setup along with the i915.modeset=1 cheatcode and it booted up!

Things are still not fully right as with this setting I cannot see the startup messages or the screen to create the file to enable persistence. This is really strange because when booting from the DVD all is OK.

I have other boot code issues. In previous versions I used lang=uk to get a UK keyboard. With this version if I do that my keyboard doesn't work! If I do not specify a keyboard it boots up and allows me to type with a US keyboard layout. The time zone appears to be US as well since my clock shows time 5 hours behind the time it showed when I had lang=uk.

Of course, these problems are nothing to do with the Poor Man's install so I am happy to report that a Poor Man's Install of Knoppix 6.3 can be achieved on a machine with the Intel 855 chipset.