In another E-mail which I don't think you've necessarily read (and this
is not your fault) I mention that the only PCMCIA network card I own has
died, or at least refuses to connect to the network.  At first I thought
it was the switch, then the cable, and after trying six different cables
of varying lengths with the PCMCIA NIC plugged directly into the router,
I figured out that the NIC just doesn't want to work (or, to avoid
anthropomorphizing, it just doesn't work).

So, whoops, its down to boot floppies to boot the install and read
packages from the CD.

Its got a 56k modem.  How long would a Debian install at 56k (with a
practical speed of 33.6k) take?  :)

Seriously, the CD in the laptop is not the problem, other than the CD
won't boot.  Debian finds the packages on the CD just fine, it just
doesn't seem to have a bf2.4 install boot disk so I can get the
advantages of the 2.4 kernel, such as ext3 filesystems.
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