Calculate installs easily but....Have installed at least 3 times, possibly 4 on 2 different machines, both Intel, and though I progressively made the password simpler and simpler, until it was only one letter, still login failed.
What could be the cause of this?

Rex

problem was ME not reading directions.

there is only one thread that ties these occurrences together and that is the install medium. First check the MD5 hash (if you haven't already) and then if the hash checks throw away the CD and burn a new one.
Cheers
nobodie

Thanks for your response. I will try that, but I am quite tired right now so I will get back with results tomorrow.

Well another day. Hmmm... I am writing this from the now installed Calculate 9.9 distro.
So thanks nobodie because although I am not certain what the problem was (but I guess I should be LOL) without your response I would have been unlikely to continue to persevere.
The answer was that because at the end of the install, I was asked to create a password, I was led to think that it was the password I should log in with. It was not and now that makes sense but I didn't think of it yesterday. Anyway, to confess, on this Gentoo distro the password after install was neither the one I created, nor the one I needed to do the install (no password was needed), but it was log in as guest with password as guest. It was only out of desperation that I decided to try guest as password
So now I feel like a dummy, and well I do tend to just jump in with trial and error efforts the norm and asking or reading a undesired alternative. In fairness to myself, I was really led astray by the fact that I could not see what was really put in as the password which was done in the terminal, and which left me only knowing what I intended to put there, not what was actually put there. And since Parted Magic works great but does screw up the keyboard so that many letters are not even possible, I thought maybe I was getting one keyboard during install, and another at the login.
So I admit it, all feels right, no matter what happens to go wrong, (sometimes at least) when it turns out right in the end.
Thanks.