The cheat codes are parameters that you pass at boot time that guide the hardware choices that Knoppix otherwise tries to make automatically. dma or nodma is a significant choice and one that unfortunately Knoppic can't always make correctly for all hardare combinations. Yes, dma is generally faster than defeating dma transfers with the nodma option, but not all systems will use dma properly; it is much more important to use the choice that works here than the one that you think is faster. I'm glad that this is all it was for you; I was suspecting that you had either a bad download or a high speed burn.