> 
> all running fat32 and they are all primary partitions.  It 
> just appears to
> go right thru the boot process but not start the cdrom 
> booting.  Even but in
> a Mandrake 8.1 in the cdrom and it booted right into 2k again.

Check you boot order in the BIOS.  Enable boot from cdrom and put it
before the HD in the boot order. 

IPC 2002