Gentlemen,
Thank you for your posts. Turning off the embedded Compaq 10/100 onboard ethernet allows SME 6.0 to install smoothly past beyond the Ananconda installation stage.
My system is a Compaq 1850R, system BIOS P07 ( 11/08/2000 ), dual PIII 500 MHz, 256 MB RAM, Compaq Array Controller 221, two 9.1 GB SCSI hotswap configured as RAID 1, one Znyx 10BT NIC ( DEC chipset ) and one 10/100 BT Netgear NIC ( DEC chipset ). An observation: during the SME configuration, the embedded Compaq NIC still shows up as an option and had to be ignored.