Hardware limitations?
 

Here's my setup:
P166 MMX
128MB PC 133 RAM
4GB Quantum Bigfoot

So far, I've been able to install Fedora Core 2 once. This was after trying for a dozen time. Last night, thinking that I could try another distro to see how it goes, I tried installing Suse. It froze up at 80%.

I did have a swap setup in both cases. This was the only OS installed on the drive. Everytime I would install, i would reformat the drive. In all the cases, I would only want to install Linux with command line support only.

I'm going to test my hard drive using diagnostics, that is, if I can find some. This is a pretty old hard drive. Any other suggestions??

I think this is the problem - try a less hungry distro, give (for example) Slackware or VectorLinux a go - you'll have to do a few things by hand, but your hardware should have no problem with them.

And welcome to LQ :D

Even if it's running exclusively command line? How about getting rid of all the unneccessary services?

I really thought I had it made with this box! LOL :D