Booting Knoppis 5.3.1 DVD on a Dell Dimension 2400 hangs after seeking to access /dev/hdc (the DVD drive correctly identified) with

Knoppix: no filesystem found!
can't access tty
job control turned off

The same DVD boots a HP machine just fine and, yes, I burned the disk as slowly as was permitted and incorporated a verification after burning.
None of the usual cheatcodes (acpi=off nodma etc) helps and "debug" eventually grinds to a halt with the same complaint before providing anything useful.
Has anybody encountering the same difficulty on this machine or on a different one found a solution? I know this can happen with the Ubuntu Live CD but there the solution seems to be "stick a floppy disk in your floppy drive and the boot process completes just fine". I haven't got a floppy drive on the Dell.
Thank you.
Fergus