Laptops :: Freeze on old laptop

I have an old prostar 8300 (200 mhz MMX w/ 32mb ram and 2 gig drive) that I am trying to install DSL to. It boots up fine (from floppy) but locks up after awhile. Creating a 40mb swap (from extra HD space) improved things, but it stilll locks up. Booting with "dsl 2" also leads to a lock up.

My other issue is that Win98se is already on the laptop and I don't want to damage that install because it hums pretty well and I'll never find drivers if I need Windoze for something. I need to shrink the windoze partition though. Why can't I seem to get parted to work on DSL??? It says it should be included, but I can't find it. I tried to install a myDSL (rescue.dsl) that included it, but this is tricky. I have no USB and no internet connection. When I throw it on a floppy and try to install it once DSL has booted up I get the a bunch of errors essentially saying that the "the ramdisk does not have the necessary space". DSL is allocating 21mb to the ramdisk.

My end goal is to have a dual boot machine, probably with a HD install of DSL. I plan on using it for a robotics competition to do programming on the Atmel AVR series so I'll need Gcc and G++ eventually...

Thanks for any help or insight you can provide.

-JTC

original here.