dselect making me INSANE!

[dkphoto <dkphoto@cyber-wire.com>]

Help! I have tried 7 times(!) to install with no success beyond the base 
system. (And why the (*&&(& doesn't this thing install at least SOME man 
pages with the base installation?)

OK, here's what's happening;

I tell dselect to install from a single CD (if I tell it to install from 
a CD set, it bitches at me later that I don't have a set; Why is it that 
the web site says the single CD's are a thing of the past, but dselect 
refuses to recognize sets? I downloaded CD#1 only, because the web site 
told me I didn't need #2. But this damn installer won't recognize it as 
part of the set.)

Then it asks me for directories that end in 'stable.' There is no 
'stable' directory on the Mac68k cd. So I redirect dselect to the 
'slinks' directory on the cd. It seems to be happy with that but then 
asks for the .deb packages in the contrib folder. There are no such files 
in the contrib folder, they are in the slink/mac-68k folder. But when 
redirected there, dselect can't seem to find them. So dselect suggests I 
tell it to search for them; I do.

Then it asks me for the main packages CD file, which I find.

Then it requests the contrib packages CD file, which I also find, but it 
is 0 k and when opened in a text editor, is completely empty!!! What is 
going on? Why does it want an empty file?

Requests for:

non-free
non-US
local

packages, all get answered "none".

At any rate, I've tried several (7 of them to be precise) times and it 
all results in the same two outcomes:

1. dselect grinds away for over an hour, listing file after file that it 
is NOT installing, then finishes, with NOTHING having been installed!

OR...

2. I get this message instead:

internal error - no filename at -e line 12, <P> chunk 15.
installation script returned error exit status 1.

Is there ANY clearly explained and well thought out tutorial on how to do 
this? I have a 56K modem so the download method is out of the question. I 
have to install from this CD that a friend with a wider pipe was kind 
enough to download for me. 

TIA

David Kachel