Help with Netinst

[" Ryan M. O'Toole" <rym@seas.upenn.edu>]

Hi,

I burned a netinst image to a cd in order to install Debian on my 
system.  It got to "Detecting hardware to find CD Drives" and the 
progress bar would never pass 2%.  Under the progress bar it reads " 
Loading module 'ohci1394' for 'Texas Instruments TSB43AB21
IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller'..."

My computer:
Sager Midern Laptop
Pentium 4 w/ HT at 3.06 GHz
RAM 512 mb
Hard drive is partitioned into 20 Gb Halves.

I have let it sit for days and it would never make any progress.

Thanks for your help,
Ryan