I'm with robert on this. For rescueing important data, I've gotten Knoppix from CD to boot to a command line (after entering MANY cheat codes) on a Pentium 100MHz 64 MB RAM. In my opinion, any older system that can not boot from the CD is only worthy of being hacked into a router or X terminal or perhaps just thrown out (recycled into parts). I would look into floppies for Slackware or Debian instead of CDRs. See Toms root boot floppy http://www.toms.net/rb/ as great example of the power of 1 floppy.