etch installation fails on two machines

[meik thomas <across.the.universe@arcor.de>]

hi,

i am trying to install debian gnu/linux "etch" 4.0r1 on two older 
machines and get the same reaction on both machines (and interestingly 
also with debian-netinst 4.0r0-cd).

the problem: installation freezes when installing the base-system while 
installing the kernel. i tried the expert installation but it did not 
help, the possibility to chose a kernel is offered directly _after_ the 
step where my installation freezes. i even cannot move the mouse.
is there a minimum of ram? the machines are rather small:
one celeron 1100 with 96k ram, the other is a 500 cpu with also 96k ram.

i tried boot parameters "acpi=no pam=yes" and different combinations of 
this, nothing works.

i would love to find out what is going wrong. i did test-installs from 
the same disk (netinst) within qemu and it worked flawless.

the striking thing is that this happens on two different machines.

are there any other information i shoud provide?

thanks for helping,

meik