Can't boot from CD-ROM on IBM Thinkpad T40

New to Knoppix, please forgive if this has been covered too often.

Trying to use Knoppix on a new IBM Thinkpad T40 (type 237392U) to shrink the NTFS partition with XP in order to install Linux. Can't even boot from the Knoppix v3.3 2003-09-22 CD-ROM, getting errors-
scsi0: ERROR on channel 0, id 0, lun 0, CDB: 0x03 00 00 40 00
Current sd0b:00: sns = 70 3
....
cloop: Read error at pos 10205664 in file /cdrom/KNOPPIX/NKOPPIX, 28756 bytes lost.
...

Have read the docs and tried the cheatcode 'knoppix testcd', but it reports all is fine; md5sum also checks out OK; even booted an older Thinkpad T20 to Knoppix with the same CD without problem. The CD-ROM drive on the T40 is a Matshita UJDA745 DVD/CDRW. Any suggestions?

Try booting with noscsi or even failsafe

Thanks for the suggestion, but noscsi and failsafe don't work either. I'm starting to think the problem is with the CD itself (eventhough it can be read on a different laptop). Will have to burn another CD to see.

It seems that perhaps your cdrom drive is causing the problems. (just a guess). It is possible to copy the KNOPPIX compressed file system to hdd and boot it w/ a floppy disk. Don't know if that's an option for you or not.

Unfortunately, not at present. The T40 doesn't come with a floppy drive, nor do I have a USB floppy drive.