Lilo boot from second drive?

[bmward@inet.net.nz]

An unusual situation! 

Removable hard drive as primary controller master drive and internal hard drive
as primary slave. Intention is that if the removable drive (master) is not
present, system will boot from the slave - and it works well when Windows (98 or
2k or XP) is installed on slave.

I can't get it to work for booting Linux on the slave, using LILO. The MBR gets
read and then the screen fills with '01's.

Is it possible to boot Linux from the slave drive when the master is not present?
How?

Thank you
Bruce
Ward