Thanks to all who offered suggestions aimed at solving this problem, some
time after I posted my query, I found an unlikely answer on one of the
newsgroups which was to replace the IDE cables with new ones, (and they had
to be new as opposed to different), this worked, (and being both cheap and
easy, was most satisfactory), and Chris and I have managed to install both
Slackware and Debian now. It has to be said that in my case they are going in
at an alarming rate until such time as I get it right!
When Chris opened up my case and replaced the cables he found that my rather
elderly computer was in fact suffering from old age and neeeded replacing. I
am having a `bare bones' computer built to take my new drives, and this
raises a question, up to now I have followed advice I read somewhere that the
swap space be twice the memory, (RAM?), having 64 whatever-they-ares of
memory I have a 128 swap space, having ordered 128 memory, do I need a 256
swap space? All suggestions gratefully recieved, although I may be too
old/full of pain killers to understand any explanation.
John