Knoppix boot hangs on a NEC versa vxi - help needed

NEC Versa Note VXi
Knoppix 3.2 (26/07/2003 snapshot)
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The boot process hangs :sad: just after the line
INIT: version 2.78-knoppipx booting
(the cd player keeps turning for about 15 seconds then stops then nothing ...)

I tried the following to no avail :
- knoppix noscsi nopcmcia nousb noagp noswap noapm noapic nomce & noddc
- failsafe
- expert
- knoppix 2
- boot from floppy made with knoppix

same result ...

"knoppix testcd" also hangs *before* checking the md5 on this machine


the CD works OK on other machines (testcd says the cdrom is ok on those)

what can i do to narrow down the problem :?:

Thanks for your help