The version I used was Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r0 Official i386 binary, I've had them some time, they came from the Linux Emporium, (when it was run by John Winter).

Having got it running it just gave me a graphical log in and would only let me log-in as user, the only way I could get to root to reboot was to use a terminal from Gnome and su. Having got to there all I could do was reboot I tried <ls> nothing! Gnome was all that was available as KDE would only get as far as the second of its icons and then revert to the grey screen with the mouse pointer/cursor.

I have no doubt whatsoever that all this was incompetence on my part, I'll bring a note book on Sunday for advice.

I've also come up with a puzzling phenomena with the boot partition.