New to Knoppix, please forgive if this has been covered too often.

Trying to use Knoppix on a new IBM Thinkpad T40 (type 237392U) to shrink the NTFS partition with XP in order to install Linux. Can't even boot from the Knoppix v3.3 2003-09-22 CD-ROM, getting errors-
scsi0: ERROR on channel 0, id 0, lun 0, CDB: 0x03 00 00 40 00
Current sd0b:00: sns = 70 3
....
cloop: Read error at pos 10205664 in file /cdrom/KNOPPIX/NKOPPIX, 28756 bytes lost.
...

Have read the docs and tried the cheatcode 'knoppix testcd', but it reports all is fine; md5sum also checks out OK; even booted an older Thinkpad T20 to Knoppix with the same CD without problem. The CD-ROM drive on the T40 is a Matshita UJDA745 DVD/CDRW. Any suggestions?