More adventures with thinkpad and linux: install methods

[Cheryl Homiak]

Ok, keep in mind that i'm not yet able to connect to a network or the Internet,
so that limits my install possibilities. First I tried the old debian woody
floppies enabled with speakup; was able to do the preliminary steps but had a
problem when I used the floppies for the base system. they wouldn't extract
properly after being loaded, maybe because the base system floppies are much
later than the woody pre-release disks on the speakup site. Tried it twice with
two sets of floppies; no error messages on any of the floppies themselves. Then
decided to try red hat, not wanting to go back clear to potato in debian and
feeling adventurous. great documentation of the install with speakup, btw. Cdrom
sounded like an airplane starting off the runway but then like one landing and
turning off engines; must not be set up to boot from cdrom? though floppy is.
Can't use floppies because cdrom and floppy drive are interchangeable; I hear
that may eventually be solvable by getting a cable for the floppy drive for
external; not sure about that. Went ahead and installed DOS with speech since
i'd
already partitioned with debian. Unfortunately still can't install Red Hat from
hard drive because I have no way to get the raw .iso files onto my hard drive.
Was
able to get my cdrom going in DOS with a generic cdrom driveer:  oakcdrom.sys.
Are there any other alternatives for doing an install I haven't thought
of, and is there any way to change the boot sequence with the thinkpad utilities
like I did the serial port? Also, when I finally do get this running, if I
decide to install red hat, is there any way to not have Disk Druid mess up my
partitions?
In other words, will I still have to go through and put in mount
points or is there a way just to get it to recognize and use the partitions
and mount points that have been done and go on from there?
Really enjoying my thinkpad, btw.

Thanks.

Cheryl