Thanks to everyone who responded, but I'm calling it quits and sticking to Mdk 9.1
I tried : changing drive settings to LBA in Bios, a HDD install from another drive, using alt1 at the F1 screen, and finally I stripped my machine down to bare essentials and almost succeeded.
With my SCSI burner unplugged and the card removed, and my SCSI Zip drive unplugged, I was able to initiate an install - got as far as loading the system when the speed dropped to a crawl, then files were reported as having errors, so I pulled the plug.
Now, how do I reclaim the 6 gigs I had allocated to 10, and use them for my 9.1 "/" partition?