boot help

[DISTEFANO@JAGUAR.UOFS.EDU]

I have the following system:
          Gateway P5-60 (Pentium)
          Bios version 1.00.03.AF1
          8 Meg RAM
          ATI AX0 video card w/1 Meg ram (PCI bus)
          Mitsumi 2x CDROM
          3.5" 1.44M floppy drive
          2 Hard Drives; WDC AC2420H  (420M)
                         ST 3243A     (220M)
I tried to load Linux slackware on my 220M drive.  I partioned the 
drive with swap and native partitions.  When I loaded the mitsumi 
boot disk, I got the following message;
     Unable to handle kernel paging at virtual address df43f900
     some stuff...
     task[0] (swapper) killed: unable to recover
  kfree of non-kmalloced memory 001c03c4, next=00000000, order=0
     Kernel panic: trying to free up swapper memory space
     In swapper task - not syncing
After a while, I used the "old1118" boot disk, it worked, loaded 
linux, and was able to boot in LINUX or DOS at will with the LILO 
loader but it wouldn't recognize my CD-ROM.
     Then I reloaded with Infomagic's 4 CDROM set with x311 
version (Aug. 1995).  The boot disks rawrited from that set 
wouldn't work but I was able to boot using the old boot disk.  
Except now, my LILO loader gave me the same error of "In swapper 
task - not syncing" when trying to boot LINUX.  I called Infomagic 
and at $2/min. they told me that my RAM chips weren't working 
right.  They checked out fine.
     I heard about debian, went to tsx-11.mit.edu, downloaded the 
boot and root disks for debian and got nearly the same message 
when I booted up.  Except change non-kmalloced memory to 001db724.
     The only way I can boot into linux now is to use the 
bootkernel disk that I had made with the first version of 
slackware.  That boot kernel only worked when I did NOT load the 
SCSI drivers in the base set of programs.  The bootkernel gave me 
that same error when I included the SCSI drivers in the base set.
     What does that "In swapper task - not syncing" error mean and 
how do I get rid of it?  I would like to work with a fully 
functional UNIX system and not a crippled one.  Thanks for any 
help you can give me.
     If I can get the debian boot disk to work, I will certainly 
try out debian.  I prefer loading UNIX the way I want it, with 
whatever package I want from whatever category I choose.
                              Tony DiStefano
                              DISTEFANO@jaguar.uofs.edu