Well, you pretty much just verified that both you have a DVD drive, and it is indeed set to boot a bootable disc. The next thing I would do is exchange the book, it sounds like you may have gotten a bad disc (also make sure that the book you have does indeed contain a bootable install disc).

Cool

Got To Be The Disc
 

That DVD is either not bootable or not readable at all. Some DVD+R drives won't read DVD-R and vice versa (very few and infrequent these days). You could try a free Ubuntu DVD to see if that helps.

I recommend select the fail-safe settings in the BIOS, so Linux can work. Also make sure IRQ is set to BIOS or not PNP OS. By default most BIOS check the PCI slots to find the graphic cards, so set it to either PCIe or AGP. Turn off caching for Video and System BIOS because they are a waste of resources.

I suggest asking a friend or neighbor to download Knoppix and make either a CD or DVD. Knoppix has the software to automatically setup old or new hardware with minimal problems.

Probably the SUSE disk that you have is not bootable and there are boot files that needs to be on a floppy in order to boot.

Thank you all for the help--I'm firt going to try a defferent DVD player and see what happens
TWOSPEED

i had this sort of problem trying to boot up on the debain install disc

i dont know how i got it to work, i think i went into bios double checked the boot order then did exit and dont save a bunch of times until it worked

WELL THE DIFFERENT DVD drive did it--it booted right away. I'm loading it now.
Thank you all for your help,I'll be back with more??? soon.
TWOSPEED

Good Job
 

Glad we could be of help. Thanx for reporting back on your success. All too often new forum users fail to do that. Reporting back lets us know what the problem was, how it was fixed, and to NOT post any more assistance on a problem that has already been solved.

Cheers, and now you know where to come when your next question comes up!