thanks.
i believe I was not reformatting the partitions when I went to reinstall, so the partition already had information on them, and were being ignored. Once I formatted them again, then the installation went smoothly.

For others that may be reading this thread, I found saving my .knofig file to a floppy is easier, and then loading it in knoppix-installer, gives me a permanent copy, rather than losing it each time.

A couple of bugs, perhaps, in knoppix-installer that I noted (that did not occur when using knx-hdinstall). One, the network card is not automatically enabled. Two, the floppy drive is not automatically mounted, and an icon placed on the desktop. Both are very easily accomplished, but would be nice to have it done automatically.