So it looks like all my problems were caused by a buggy kernel or buggy drives in the boot CD. I feel like such a dumbass for not trying a different CD when I was there. I booted up on a Knoppix CD and had full speed on IDE on the motherboard and no problems doing things on the SCSI. I started building the new OS last night and it’s busy doing a stage 2 install as I type this. Doing it nice and fast as well I might add, SMP kicks ass!
There’s still lots of work to be done once the base system is installed, installing all the apps, finding all the perl modules, reconfiguring apache, mailman, mysql, etc etc etc to get things back to a usable state. Probably another couple of nights getting things going, and then, the hardware, software, OS and every other deity and minor deity out there willing, a working system. If I’m lucky I can get a system that works for the majority of the time back in before next week (knocking crossed fingers on wood), in at least enough of a state that only little tweaks and corrections are needed.
In theory….