Well, I've got that far, but that's where I balk. When I run "knoppix-installer" I get three mysterious reports:
No Implementation: Support for opening ntfs file systems is not implemented yet.
No Implementation: This ext2 filesystem has a rather strange layout! Parted can't resize this (yet).
[Then the very same line again]

I'm presuming that I can ignore this, since knoppix is simply having problems recognizing ext3.

I'm then brought into the "Knoppix Partition-Menu" where I'm given the choce to partition the hard disk. I do so, and qtparted v.0.4.4 opens. When I click on /dev/hda, I get the partition setup for the drive, and it shows me the current partitions, which are
/dev/hda1 ntfs 18GB
/dev/hda2 ext3 101 MB (/boot)
/dev/hda3 ext3 9GB
/dev/hda4 extended
/dev/hda5 linux-swap

[the above is a slightly abbreviated account of the report]

My problem is - now what? My options seem to be limited to deleting the ext3 partitions. I'm happy to do this, I suppose, but where does that leave the boot loader, which still believes that Mandrake resides on those partitions? I'm using GRUB, by the way, on hda1. And if I delete those partitions, will knoppix then proceed to load itself there? If so, then great, but if not, what disaster will unfold?

My version of Knoppix seems to be the latest, by the way - 3.4

Thanks for the advice so far