Just wanted to let the group know and thank everyone who provided great tips and suggestions.  

I performed the hardware replacement of my dying CDROM with a new 52x CDROM this morning.  Even 
though I made boot and drive diskettes they were not necessary.  I am now installing (actually 
upgrading) RedHat Linux 9 and boy is this drive fast (compared to the old one, which I think was a 
4x!) :)

Thanks again and everyone have a great weekend. 

Jon Moss
jon.moss@cnonline.net