floppyless install?

["Jeff DeMaagd" <jeffdm iserv net>]

After a long hiatus from linux, I am trying to reinstall Red Hat 6.1 onto my
MIATA type system, I have had several variations of Red Hat 4.x, 5.x and 6.x
on it at one time or another.

I am having a devil of a time trying to get the root floppy to work, I get
this message:

kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fd on 2:00

I checked metalab and found no updated ramdisk.img, and I tried many
different floppies and used rawrite at least twice per disc, but nothing
changes this.

I also never get this line to work the first time after a reboot:

boot fd0:vmlinux.gz root=/dev/fd0

this doesn't work the first time either:

boot fd0:vmlinux.gz root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1

The error I get is a "bad magic" error, I didn't write down the exact
numbers, but they were the same every time.

So, in conclusion, am I doing something obviously wrong, and is there a way
to install Red Hat AXP Linux on this beast without the floppy?  I have
always had floppy difficulties when installing Linux in the past.

Thanks!

Jeff DeMaagd