Debian on a Qube 1: SSH connection refused

["Pepillo" <pepillo@gmx.de>]

I'm trying to get Debian installed on a standard Cobalt Qube 1 (2700)
as described in http://www.cyrius.com/debian/cobalt/no-serial.html ,
using Martin's tarball (thanks!).
The Qube boots up, gets an IP via DHCP, syncs time using ntpdate,
shows that time at the lc display, but ... refuses ssh connections!
It replies to ping, nmap portscan reports all ports closed except 111
and 113. I cann ssh to annother Qube 2 (running debian) connected
to the same network cable, so there are no firewalls blocking port 22.
Is sshd running? I noticed "ssh started" on the display during boot process.
But without serial console and without ssh connection that machine
leaves me alone in the dark. So I shut down the Qube by the rear buttons
and removed the hard drive to reconnect it as slave drive to the pc
to look for same error messages in the log files.
Found nothing from sshd in "auth.log", just Martin's old entrys.
Guess that sshd does not come up, but how to verify that?
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
-- 
Pepillo