Thank you to everybody who replied with advice.

Wiping the HDD was my last resort, (I should have mentioned)
Indeed, I know know that it wasn't the answer at all,
- instead I decided to try to learn, by trying to solve the Linux problem
myself, - a hair shirt and self-flaggelation might have been an easier option
for a newbie like me !

(Sorry, this Thread was originally about wiping or altering the Master Boot
Record (MBR, OR mbr.))

Nothing I could access in DOS or any Linux rescue disk seemed to work, but
quite likely, my own fault.

Eventually I found that by using any Linux boot disk and typing at boot
......

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1  ....... nothing seemed to have
happened, but somehow I arrived back at the C:\ prompt.
(see;  www.linuxgazette.com/issue63/okopnik.html)
From there, I was able to get back to more comfortable territory by doing a
reinstall of W98 using the E: drive, - which I haven't got !
Weird stuff isn't it ?

My problem was that 'experimenting' with a current distro. of Linux (Mandrake
8x) on old hardware was doomed to failure from the start.

The first lesson I have learned is that Linux software has moved ahead faster
than the hardware libraries (now, there is an old term) can support it, - or
to put it another way, "Why would any hotshot Linux developer bother about
supporting old junk hardware like mine ?"

A fair question to my mind, - which leads me to conclude that the various
current distro's of Linux (RH 7.3; Mandrake 8x; etc) have basically the same
hardware requirements of Windoze.   ie: 2GB HDD and 128 RAM.

Now that I think that I know some basics, I'm encouraged to venture further
into the unknown.

My thanks to Ian, Tomas, Carroll, and Kent Grizzel for your special help in
unlocking the puzzle.

Kevin,
Auckland,
New Zealand.

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