can't read root_floppy for Debian 1.1

["Susan G. Kleinmann" <sgk@sgk.tiac.net>]

On one of the computer systems here, I am suddenly unable to use the Debian
installation disks.

Details:
I am using a boot floppy made from a file dated something like May 4.
It boots version 1.3.95.

The boot seems to go OK; i.e., the kernel loads without any obvious problems.

Then I insert the root floppy, and the system reports that it sees a
Minix file system.
Shortly thereafter (i.e., approximately 3 dozen '<5>''s later) I start 
seeing errors of this type:
     "VFS: brelse: Trying to free free buffer."
This appears about 50 times.

What happens next varies.
Sometimes I see:
     "Init:  started.  Init: executing etc/rc auto"
     "Init:  executing sh"
     "Segmentation fault"
     "block_device: not found"
Then the computer goes into what I think is some kind of stack dump and hangs.

I don't always get the same error messages.  Sometimes, I see:
     "dialog not found"

Rarely, I see another error message, also repeated endlessly,
     (Long error message containing the string "# of fd's.")

====================================================
The system has in it:

Intel Pentium 120 MHz
48 MByte RAM (not EDO)
2 Western Digital EIDE's
Adaptec 2940 wide
1 Toshiba SCSI CD-ROM
1 Quantum 1.2 (1.6?) MByte SCSI
1 3c590
1 Jaz drive

====================================================
I thought for sure that I had Debian Linux going on this system a week or
so ago, but now I can't remember what I did.  I also can't remember how
I partitioned the drives, which is why I was trying to bring the boot/root
floppy up again (I just wanted to use cfdisk).

BTW, the root floppy itself seems to be OK, as far as I can tell.  
I mounted it on another Debian Linux system here with -t minix, and the 
contents look just fine.

This is the weirdest problem I've seen with Linux so far.  Does anyone
have any ideas what might be causing it?

Susan Kleinmann
sgk@sgk.tiac.net