more install problems

[Richard Lyons <richard@the-place.net>]

I gather I am exceptionally dim or have exceptionally poor hardware.  
I am near to giving up on this.  I had a working Debian on the 
Thinkpad570, then started again in order to get the NIC installed.  
Now I can't even complete an install.  When Installing the base 
system, it appears to complete, then gives  
  "debboot exited with an error"
so I cannot make a bootable system.  In addition, the make a boot 
floppy always fails (I did originally succeed, on the first install, 
so I know the floppy _was_ working).  In fact, trying to make a boot 
floppy now actually destroys the floppys in about a fifth of a 
second.  If I then put them into another machine, I cannot mount them 
- gives an error 
  "Could not mount device.
   The reported error was:
   mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, 
   and none was specified"
I've tried this with floppys that do mount in the other machine 
immediately prior to trying to write a boot floppy.  It zaps them 
instantly!  Might be an application for this...

Seriously, can anyone shed any light on what to do about either of the 
above?  

-- 
richard