Slackware 9.1 root disk problem

[Jes and guide dog Harley]

Hi folks,
Well, I downloaded speakup.s and color.gz, and put them both on two separate floppy disks. I had to format the disks a few times
but that's beside the point. After I rebooted with the boot disk and typing ramdisk speakup_synth=ltlk, I was given the following:
Vfs: Insert root floppy disk to be loaded in to ramdisk and press enter (the usual message).
After loading the root disk andp ressing enter, I got the usual compressed image found at block 0 message. After a while, the
system seemed to hang, as the floppy drive just stopped spinning and the only thing that worked was the speakup review commands on
the numpad. Any idea why this is happening? I would appreciate any advice.
Jes