Kevin,

Thanks for the explanation.  It appears I do have LILO on my floppy because
the "linux root=/dev/hda2" command worked fine in booting my system to
maintanance mode.  Still can't start X though.
However, using "Running Linux" 2nd ed. by Mat Welsh I tried,
    rdev /boot/vmlinuz
and got Root device /dev/hdb1 back which I expected.  I then tried
    rdev /boot/vmlinuz /dev/hda2
whereupon I received the response that
    vmlinuz  Read-only file system.
I could try "linux root=/dev/hda2 rw" but I don't know if that is legit.  Of
course when I attempted changing vmlinuz with chmod ugo+rwx vmlinuz, I got
the same response.

I think I'll try that reboot parm "rw" with the reboot.  If it fails well...
I still can try changing the boot floppy as you recommended.  I'll have to
find a good floppy first.
When I finally have full function restored I'm going to install LILO for
multiple OSs.

thanks,
mark