Problem solved.  Basically stemmed from a bad boot sector... the Linuxcare
rescue disk was a lifesaver.

   http://lbt.linuxcare.com/index.epl

It was good to have a spare hard disk around... also points out the
importance of having a separate partition for '/' so you can back just
*that* up without having to back up your entire /home directory when you
have to fiddle with this sort of thing.

Bottom line, there are happy souls out there today because of the folks
here on the PLUG list.  Cheers!

\\/
http://www.wlindley.com