Given that this
http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-user-9907/msg01168.html
continues to be a problem to this day,
it would be preferable to replace
http://www.debian.org/releases/slink/i386/linux
on page
Installing
Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 For Intel x86 - Methods for Installing Debian
with
ftp://...
Best Regards,
Robert Cristel
Montreal, Canada