[Dclug] Laptop boot problem -- Debian

[Alan McConnell]

A friend from NYC is down here, with a rather ancient laptop,
an "Averatec", if that means anything to anyone.  He asserts that
it runs Windoze real good.

We've freed up disk space and we want to put Debian on it.  We
boot off of the first disk, answer the questions about English,
American, etc(so the machine is certainly able to read the CD
and boot the kernel), and then the machine starts to investigate
the hardware.

And it hangs at "Entering PC card services".  The red bar just
doesn't complete, even after a minute or so.

I don't know what "PC card services" means.  I hope that one
or more member of the Assembled Wisdom can help.  In particular,
I hope that some appropriate "boot parameters" can get the 
install past this stage.

My friend goes back to NYC tomorrow evening.  So, if I get cogent
answers we can try again tomorrow morning.

Any and all help very much appreciated!

Alan

-- 
Alan McConnell :  http://patriot.net/users/alan
    "He lies.  He spies.  He wants us to ignore
    His war . . ."   Impeach him!