laptop in a bad place - won't boot

["Michael Kevin O'Brien" <mikeo@aw.sgi.com>]

Hola~

I have a laptop that seems to be beyond help. When I try to boot it, I get:

    Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.

What exactly does this mean? When I boot the rescue floppy, then type rescue
root=/dev/hda1 I get:

    VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.

but, the system hangs (or at least doesn't change for over ten mins. When I
boot the rescue floppy, then type rescue root=/dev/fd0 I get:

    Unable to load NLS charset cp437(nls_cp437)
    VFS: Mounted root (msdos filesystem) readonly
    Unable to open an initial console

Now, I'm not sure why this doesn't work. I thought the rescue floppy had a
bootable version of the kernel on it.

I can start the installation process from the rescue disk. I can mount the
swap and main partition. I can install the kernel, drivers, and base system.
However, when I try to make the hd bootable, I get an error dialog about how
the process failed. (I am assuming lilo reports some error that doesn't make
it out of the ui.) Is there a way to put the installation script into a mode
where it actually reports errors instead of generic dialogs?

Is there any hope? Ideally, I'd like to get the drive booting without
scrubbing it. It would be nice to keep all the code and such I have in my
home dir. It would be great to keep all the packages I have installed, but
that's more of a secondary priority.

Please cc me on any replies.

MO

-- 

Michael O'Brien
mikeo@sgi.com                                                  Alias|Wavefront
206.287.5634                                                    Polygonist

"This will not look good on a resume."
			-Robin Williams