trouble installing CentOS 5.3 (after failing with Fedora 8)

[Buz Davis]

I wasn't sure whether or not to use the old thread about trouble 
installing Fedora 8 or not, but decided to open a new thread.  As the 
matters are loosely related let me briefly recapitulate the previous:

---background---
I have a small fixed ip network at home, running red hat 9 on two
amd k6 500 Mhz boxes.  One has 256 M memory and the other 320 M.  They 
pretty much meet my needs, but lately I have detected that the internet 
sites
I frequent are requiring some more modern software than I can run. At 
the time this started I had no way to write a CD, so ordered a set of 
Fedora 8 disks.  I picked an older version in recognition of my older, 
limited hardware.  It turned out that F8 had a problem with amd 
processors, which was fixed in a respin but the set I had was the 
original release and the respins don't seem to be available.  During
the process of attempting to get the install to work I bought yet 
another old system, but this one running an intel processor and with a 
drive capable of burning CD's.  (I had to replace a broken Win XP with 
RH9 to get to it, but it did give me capacity to burn CDs).  F8 wouldn't 
install on that box because of hard disk problems.  At this point I 
determined to abandon attempts with F8 and ordered a copy of CentOS 5.3,
the i386 version.

--- end background ---

The problem:
The CentOS failed also.  I could get the first screen up, offering 
choices of how to boot,  and if I asked for memtest86 that would start.
However, any other choice resulted in a reboot (generally during loading
of vmlinux).  Sometimes the disk wouldn't be recognized as bootable.
I have convinced myself that the disks are OK and that I must need 
either better hardware or more memory (but this is the i386 version of 
CentOS 5.3) or some parameter on the install that I haven't tried
(and I've tried about all I have found or remember).  I would appreciate 
any help.

Would it be considered bad behavior to also post this on the CentOS 
mailing list ?

What I've done so far:
At first I thought that the disk must be bad (couldn't even run a 
mediacheck) and emailed the vendor.  Then it occurred to me that I could 
perhaps download and burn disk 1of6 and use that to get the install 
started.  I reaized that the process would be a bit "iffy" on a box with 
hard-disk problems, and also I had never burned a cd, but googled around 
for instructions and plunged in.  I downloaded an ios, checked it with 
md5sum and it was OK.  I copied it to the "new" computer via NFS and 
checked it again: OK.  I burned a CD using cdrecord, and that appeared 
to work.  The result behaved much like the original had.  I tried two
more times, varying stuff that I thought might affect the burn, and 
always got the same sort of behavior.  Finally I tried mounting each of 
the four disks 1of6 I now had and copied (from /dev/cdrom rather than 
/mnt/cdrom, so as to avoid separating out the files) each to a separate 
directory and compared them.  All three that I burned were identical. 
The "store bought" disk was a little larger, but compared OK up to EOF 
(and I recall reading that mass-produced disks might be different in 
their padding).  So I am convinced now that there is nothing wrong with 
either the original or recently burned disks 1of6
and the problem must either be requiring better/more hardware (but this 
is the i386 version of cent OS) or some parameter on the install I have 
never heard of.