Hello Charles,
I'm not certain, but it sounds like an old BIOS trying to deal with a large disk drive. If you created the emergency boot floppy during installation, try the following:
1. After installation, boot from the emergency boot floppy. The system should work properly and prompt you to select an initial password. Go ahead and select a password. (You can actually use the system this way, as long as you always boot from the floppy.)
2. To make the system work properly without using the emergency floppy, type Ctrl-Alt-F3 to get a root prompt. Log in to the "root" account using the initial password you selected in step 1.
3. Edit the /etc/lilo.conf file using either "vi", "emacs-nox" or "pico" as your editor. If you don't know any Unix editors, use pico - that's the easiest to use. Look for the line containing the word "prompt", and beneath it add a line containing the word "linear". Save your change and quit the editor.
4. Run the command: /sbin/lilo
5. Remove your emergency floppy from the disk drive, and try rebooting your system using Ctrl-Alt-Del.
Please let us know whether that worked!
Good luck and best regards,
- Joe