I'm unsure of exactly what's happening, but I'd suggest that it may be easier to copy the drivers to a floppy than straight to HD.

The video issue doesn't sound, to me, like a driver issue. You might try re-naming /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 on your Mandy system (I'm assuming that Mandy uses XF86Config-4 -- check this!) and replacing it with the Knoppix one (which, I assume, works).