Hello,
I'm trying to install linux (namely debian sarge) on a system with the
following config:

Intel D945PSN board
Pentium D 820 processor (Core Duo 2.8GHz)
500GB Seagate Baracuda (SATAII)
Plextor PX-716-SA DVD RW (SATA)

I've been having nothing but trouble.  First of all I screwed up and
tried to install the i386 build of Debian Sarge (yeah, I know, 15 years
of working with the i386 architecture has formed some habits for me). 
After realizing my mistake I tried to install the amd64 build (again of
Sarge) but it wouldn't mount my DVD drive during the install so I
couldn't get anywhere.  A little searching on the net and it seems that
installing from a SATA optical drive just isn't ready for prime time
yet.  OK, so I hook up an old IDE CDROM, that gets me past the mounting
of the drive problem but now it won't recognize the NIC (on board 10/100
- 82652gx chipset).  !@#!$!!  So I slap an older NIC into the thing
(Intel 82578B chipset, eepro100 driver) that gets me through to the next
step.  Now it can't find the harddrive. M!$!#$!@ F$#%!$#!!!  I could
through an IDE harddrive in there and get past that error but at some
point I might as well just build another computer as I've been slowly
replacing every component in this thing to get the damn install to run. 
Anyway, I'm hoping someone on the list can help me.  Any ideas?  Is
there a different distro that might be friendlier to my setup (I'm
downloading FC4 as I write this in hopes that maybe it will install). 
Is there an installfest coming up soon?  If not does someone want to
host one? ;-)
Thanks in advance,
Ben.