These options don't seem to make a difference. It still shuts down, and it still locks out the bios on the next reboot.

Unplugging the pwer cord does seem like it fixes the problem. I don't know about removing the ram

Oddly enough, even though the system clearly says it's not enabling apm in the boot messages, the system will still do a full shutdown and power off the machine. Odd.

I 've even tried halting manually, hitting the power button at 'Knoppix halted' instead of waiting for it to eject the cd and turn off ... but it still doesn't seem to make any difference. Leads me to think its happening somewhere else.

In a related note I use debian on some of these systems, and I haven't experinced this type of problem before. Not sure what option is causing the problem...