I finally got my Presario 2100 with a present but DOA internal cd to work with a USB CDROM. I had to set the BIOS to boot: 1) CD 2) removable device. I also had to set the USB to "legacy ON" The latter is most likely die to the USB CDROM being kind of old.

I then had to use Knoppix 3.7 rather than 3.8. I discovered that the 2.6 kernel didnt like my setup. Using the 2.4 kernel (i.e. knoppix vs knoppix26) I had to use the cheatcode "Knoppix bootfrom=/dev/scd0"

Once KDE came up I could then partition and install.

The final oddity is that from the LILO prompt I have to use the 2.6 kernel boot or I get a black screen (weird) But so far so good.