i hae down loaded the iso files and burned them, using alchol 120%. I try and boot the first disk from my cd rom, after i change my bios to boot from cd rom. at the end of start up when it says "boot from atapi cd-rom: " it says failure... disk boot failure.

what have i done wrong or over looked???

You've potentially done one of many things wrong.

1.) I know you used Alchol, but did you burn it right? When you open the disk (from in windows or another linux install), does it show it as one file, or a collection of folders?
2.) Did you check the md5-sum of the iso you downloaded? This will make sure the disk isn't corrupt.
3.) Are you sure your booting from the right disk? Debian potentailly comes with like 15 discs. You want the first one.

If all else fails, download again and burn all from another computer. Sometimes that will fix it (especially if your hardware is broke and you don't know it).

thank you penguin of wonder. i figured out my problem and its a total newby problem. i downloaded alpha and i dont have an alpa machine. duuu.. so insted of wasting more time with downloading 16 more cds. i downloaded the debian 3.1 netdownload. so much quicker. performed basic instal (my first time linux) and set it up as a net server. what ever net server meens? my goal inevedibly is to have a firewall and a web cam server. first two commands i used (ls, and ls -laF) lol... still have losts more to learn even befor i become a newbee.
thank you for your reply, will be reading more about my ignorance later.