No installable kernel found

[Felix Miata]

I've got an ornery system that doesn't want anything installed on it. Initially I was getting wierd errors trying, and wound up changing both CD drive and cable. That made CD self check errors go away, but still I can't
install. Memtest finds no RAM errors. Seatools finds no HD errors. Mandriva 2007 One and Knoppix 4.0.2 live CDs apparently run just fine on this system that currently has no installed OS on HD. This is what failed so far:

Xandros 3.0.2
Kubuntu 5.10
Edubuntu 5.10
Kubuntu 6.06

Edubuntu I tried at least 3 times, Xandros once, K5.10 twice, and K6.06 a bunch of times, including with various kernel options like noapic nolapic pci=noacpi and probably others I've forgotten

The last try with K5.10 gave this error:

'No installable kernel was found in the defined APT sources.
The current default kernel package is 'kernel-image'.
You may try to continue though this rather strange error is probably fatal.'

With all 5.10 tries on both CDs the errors were this or otherwise kernel related. Xandros simply hung at 85% complete. The 6.06 errors were always/usually kernel configuration/initrd-related. This last try with 5.10 was
'server' to try to get just the simplest base installed in order to stop needing any CD, but it didn't help.

The system is a HP Vectra with i440BX PII-350 with two high speed fans blowing on its nice clean heat sink, 192M RAM (all 3 slots each have a 64M HP brand stick), ATI Rage Pro, 3COM PCI NIC, ISA audio, HP CD drive and
Seagate ATA 4GB.

Any ideas, besides pitching the contraption in the dumpster, or adding RAM?
-- 
"The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him,
and I am helped."				Psalm 28:7 NIV

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata  ***  http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/