debian on a 486

[Matt Gerginski <mattgerg@users.sourceforge.net>]

Hi.  I want to put debian on a 486 that I recently got from my school. 
They were giving away "obsolete" computers, so I grabbed 5 of them.  I
just have one small problem:  I can't get any of the rescue.bin disks to
boot on the computer.  It boots fine in my newer computer, so its not
the disk.  To get around that, I used an old slackware bootdisk, and
then loaded the debian root installation disk.  It worked great for
everything except for the network configuration and some kernel
modules.  I tried to do the neccasary repairs myself, but it seems the
only way to get this thing working right is to use the debian boot
disk.  I need to find a boot disk that works, compile a kernel of my own
for the boot disk, or find an older debian boot disk and hope it works
with the machine and still works with the debian installation process. 
Any suggestions or help???  Thanks a ton.

	--mattgerg