Mip-o-suction (horrible performance)

[Rich Johnson <rjohnson@dogstar-interactive.com>]

Folks--

I have just converted an old NEC PG350 (500MHz) w 256MB and 20G(WDC  
WD200BB) disk from WIn'98 to Debian Sarge and ran into a problem I've  
never before encountered with Debian:

Performance that is HORRIBLE beyond belief!

For example:
 -  ~16 minutes to boot (A 10 yr old 130Mhz PowerPC is faster) to  
GDM login screen.
 -   >2 min. just for for ''calculating module dependencies''
 -  >3 min. just for hotplug
 - ~10min. from user login to a settled Gnome desktop.

What gives?   I've never seen such bad performance.
What diagnostics/benchmarks should I be looking at?

Judging from the lackadaisical disk LED activity, I doubt it's the disk.

Thx,
--rich