HELP. trying to fsck or fdisk the hardrive. zero-length. I/O

[Markus]

end_request: I/O error, dev 03:00 (hda), sector 0

This is often seen when DMA is not supported, try the cheatcode nodma.

how can knoppix even run without access to a hdd. it must have space, no. where is root mounted?

It makes a ramdisk out of your RAM and uncompresses there what it needs.