Thanks again for your help. After many mis-steps,
most but not all my fault, I seem to have a working
system.
If you succeed in your experiments, one thing you can do to help the
next person is: write-up your experiences. If you follow the basic
format of the installation manual, I think there might be somebody
here who would be willing to help you to get it into shape to
include as an appendix to the manual.
I may try to do this, although getting my new machine up and
running completely (installing old softare & files, etc) and
having a life are claiming my time.
One specific thing: the documentation for AMD64 recommends
/ have a size of 150-250MB. On my Toshiba desktop, this
resulted in warnings that I had used up available space as soon
as the machine was booted, even though I asked for 350MB. Perhaps
you might suggest to the installation guide authors that they check
this number.