System Recovery

[Labitt, Bruce]

Found something interesting in my feeble attempts to bring up the system
again.  It looks like the DVD writer is responsible or non-compliant
with my version of linux (Scientific Linux 5.2 - "RHEL5.2").  Installing
linux with the DVD writer caused a kernel panic.  If anyone wants more
details I can provide a few.  

I took out the errant hardware and swapped in the old DVD-ROM.  No
kernel panic and the system is installing now.  FWIW I am installing a
new system on the 300GB SATA drive.

This leads me to believe that wanting to write DVDs caused the whole
system to crash to begin with.  Arrgh.  

After this is all done, I will disconnect the new disk and try a rescue
on the old disk - without the damn DVD writer.  Hmm - are there any SATA
DVD writers that work?  I would not have figured that this drive would
have caused the havoc to begin with.

-Bruce