on an IBM iSeries 500mhz celeron laptop, attempt to boot Knoppix 3.7 from cd, begins boot, uncompresses, boots to kernal, scans for devices, sets paths then

several lines beginngin with cloop: with Read Error..., and error -3 compressing block...
then
/linuxrc : chmod : I/O error

more of cloop lines

kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k binfmt -0000, errno = 5
Kernal Panic : no init found. Try passing init= option to kernal [btw im pretty new to linux, so i have no clue how to "pass" such a command to the kernal]

and it just sits there frozen like ice

any suggestions? oddly, it did the same exact thing on a compaq athlon desktop pc [model 5108US ]