Failing Sarge net install

[Glenn Taylor <debianu@napan.com>]

I am trying to install sarge on an old PC that has been running RedHat
8.0 for a few years now and I am having no luck with Sarge.  PC is an
AMD k6 300mhz on a Asus P5a-b board with 256mb RAM and an 80g IDE drive.

RH8 ran fine on this machine but I thought it was time for a change.  I
use it as a web/mail server to play with.

Net install always boots fine but will fail randomly at different steps
during the install.  It may fail at choose keyboard or it may make it as
far as installing base system.  Most of the time when it fails it will
report a failure on a red screen and let you go back and repeat the step
that failed.  If I keep repeating steps it will proceed but fail again
at another random point.  Occasionally it just locks up.

I have tried linux and linux26 with npapic acpi=off
I have tried the full netinstall CD and the business card CD install.
I have tried different cds and even cd drive.
I have even tried the floppy install.

Now for the really strange part.  If I pop in Ubuntu Breezy Badger
install cd it will complete without a single error!

Any ideas of what to try?  This is more of a challenge at the moment and
I hate to give up.

Thanks

Glenn