Installing from a bare 486

[Jordan Cooper <jcooper@access1.net>]

I had a problem during a cd install on my old 486.  I partitioned the
drive and when debian tried to mount the drive it hung.  I rebooted and
my dos partition is gone.  Now I have no system so I can't get the
machine to recognize the cd drive (that I just installed specifically to
install debian).

Is there any way to install debian from the cd without msdos on my
computer?  Can debian recognize the cd without dos?  I have an american
megatrends motherboard and there's no boot from cd option in the bios
setup.