LinuxQuestions.org - slack 9.1 usb-cdrom parameters for install

Hey,
So I have a fairly exotic laptop, the sharp mm10. I've run into a few experiences of folks installing either Redhat or Debian on this machine, but both distros right now, as far as I can understand, are a bit lacking in the ALSA sound drivers department. I've had problems w/ installing both RH 9 and SUSE 8.2. Slackware 9.1 seemed to be a solution.

Now this laptop has no internal cd-rom, but will boot off of the Slack 9.1 ISOs in the external LITEON DVD/CDRW drive. The boot process is handled by the BIOS, correct? No problems, but it's early yet...*when I move along o the setup program, it fails to detect the disc by simply scanning for a drive.* No SCSI device shows up, no IDE, nada.

Should I pass special kernel parameters prior to runnign the setup program, to recognize the USB drive as a device? Should I force the mount somehow at this point, or later? As the kernel loads, with the "bare.i" option selected, it seems to be deregistering the USB

Do the messages below help?

SCSI subsystem driver REvision: 1.00
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
[note: the above line repeated 3X]

Or:

usb.c: USB device 2 (vend/prod 0xecd/0x40b0) is not claimed by any active driver
.
usb-ohci.c: USB HC TakeOver failed!

Then,

usb.c: registered new driver hiddev
usb.c: registered new driver hid

And later, to my consternation:

No USB devices found. Unloading USB subsytem...
usb.c: deregistering driver hiddev
usb.c: deregistering driver usbbkbd
ehci_hcd 00:0c.2: remove state 1
usb.c: USB disconnect on device 00:0c.2-0 address 1
usb.c: USB disconnect on device 00:0c.2-1 address 2
usb.c: USB bus 1 deregistered
usb.c: deregistering driver usbdevfs
usb.c: deregistering usb hub

Ugh, I've probably provided far too much info, or maybe not. I'm betting that the solution will be ridiculously simple, but I'm just too new to Linux...

Any help would be appreciated...