clean hd-media install onto hard drive partition of old SCSI box

[sar0113@nc.rr.com]

Hello,

I want to install a recent Debian distribution on a clean partition of
a stand-alone SCSI box which runs multiple legacy OSes, including
Woody. I did not upgrade Woody because driver support for my Initio
SCSI host adapter was problematic with supplied 2.6 kernels for
several years, but apparently resolved according to a Debian bug
report.

Unfortunately I cannot boot from my SCSI CD-ROM after configuring the
host adapter BIOS and drive to do so, so I was unable to boot a
live CD and test legacy hardware support. No BIOS support for USB
booting, either. I have found a full commercially-prepared set of
Debian 5 CDs which should include the Initio driver I need, so I am
trying to figure out how to install from these CDs through a hard
drive-based install located in the same partition  where I want Debian
5 installed.  Cue Debian install guide and FAQ.

I have initialized a 3.3 MB ext3 root partition for Debian 5 and
downloaded the hd-media versions of vmlinuz, initrd.gz, boot.img.gz and
a cd ISO from the official Debian archives. 

1) If I install this kernel and iso image in my Debian 5 root 
partition with lilo or grub, I should automatically launch the Debian 5
installer after booting this partition, correct?


2) How do I go about creating the rudimentary file system I need be
able to install lilo or grub on the clean root partition - without
what subdirectories and executables do I  need and where do I find
them without a working Debian 5 system to clone?


3a) If I can launch the Debian Installer this way, will it allow me to
manually switch package sources from Debian servers to my CD-ROM (which
presumably I can mount once the installer has loaded the Initio SCSI
driver module.)?

3b) If not, will the installer pull packages from my CDs if I replace
the hd-media version of the cd ISO image with the CD version of the
cd #1 ISO image?

Thanks for any pointers.


     Please do not add my name or address to mailing lists 
     nor distribute them without my consent.  Thank you.