In an earlier thread I described how I want to find space on my hard drive and try installing Debian. (I have Suse 8.2 installed along with 98 and XP)

I downloaded the first CD and started following the very verbose instalation instructions.

Got as far as the network card and it could not find my card nor was the driver in the list of drivers. (I had selected the default install which was 2.2.xx)

From reading other threads I understand I need to install later version of Debian (2.4.xx) and there is on on the CD which was onen option.

My question is this - I will be replacing Red Hat and installing on the same partition that Red Hat occupied. However I wish to retain the Grub installation I have and just change the entry from Red Hat to Debian.

The entry in grub for Red Hat is:_
root (hd0,7)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-9 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-9.imgitrd-2.4.20-9.img

How should I modify this to boot Debain once installed.

The instructions for installing the nvidia drivers all say I need the kernel source files, are they available on the installation CD?

Well GRUB looks for the menu.lst file (maybe named diff if installed with redhat) in /boot/grub/ if you install debian in place of RedHat it will erase all that and you will need to install grub again unless /boot is its own partition.
But to answer your question:

title Debian
root (hd0,7)
*Edited* kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-9 ro root=/dev/hda8

If installed to hda8 and that was the name of the vmlinuz file in the boot directory.
Make a boot disk if possible just in case.

should be all you need - if not someone please correct me.
Yes, the kernel source is available on the CD.

I went through the insallation process from the CD again - this time choosing bf2.4 option so that later I can install the nvidia drivers I need for my network card to work.
I ignored all the network options and the boot options and created a boot floppy - however when I tried the floppy it failed loading linux.

I then went into Suse and mounted the Debian /hda8 partition so I could see the name of the kernel (vmlinux-2.4.18-bf2.4) and then edited the grup installation with:
kernel /boot/vmlinux-2.4.18-bf2.4 ro root=/hda8
as suggested.

It starts booting Debia and then fails with the message
kernel panic: I have no root and I want to scream
(poor thing!!)

What do I try next??

Please ignore above - I tried root=/dev/hda8 and it worked!!!

Sorry bout that .. didn't notice that I had left out the /dev...