Thx very much Harry for the quick reply.

I took your advice, created the SBM install to floppy, and booted. Unfortunately, for a reason I cannot diagnose, SBM returns a disk error (00x0) when pointed at the CD-ROM, although it sees it. I was able to use this method with another system.

I then tried copying the Knoppix iso files to a laptop FAT partition, and attempted to use loadlin under DOS. But there is no initrd image in the iso (at least that I could find), so that didn't work.

However, in making one last try with the Knoppix docm, this time the cheatcodes, I found:

"If your BIOS does not support el torito booting from CD, you can create two bootable floppy disks by issuing (from Knoppix running on a different machine) the command "mkbootfloppy", which will create a bootable Kernel-disk plus a disk containing the initial ramdisk, which will be prompted for at boottime."

The mkbootfloppy program choked on several floppies, but eventually the copying worked. I was subequently able to successfully boot from floppy to load the CD on the laptop. Mission accomplished.

I am a bit surprised at the obtuseness of the documentation. Making the boot floppies was straightforward, once I found the correct instructions.

Again, thx for your help.

PS. One of my objectives with this was to test what video settings Knoppix would detect, because with my VectorLinux install (Slackware based) I have not been able to get 1024x768@16bpp no matter how I tinkered with the XF86Config file. At one point I came close to frying the display. But Knoppix did the detection like a champ and enabled me to run xvidtune so I could get the precise settings. So all in all, a good project!

I haven't messed with stuff like this since my old Fortran and Assembler days (dating myself, right?).