Okay, tried making a floppy from the cdrom-changedisk image, but got the same error when I tried using it at the point we thought:

The floppy problem is easy: it is expecting a floppy with an ext2 filesystem containing additional drivers. You are feeding it a boot disk (no filesystem). It doesn't matter which boot disk you feed it, it isn't going to work. Moreover, it already sees your CD-ROM drive, so it isn't a question of loading an additional driver.

The real problem is why it isn't able to read your CD-ROM. My WAG is that the installer isn't creating the proper symbolic link for /dev/cdrom. If this is the case, it's probably fixable. The magic command is "ln -sf /dev/sr0 /dev/cdrom". The trick is finding a way to issue the command. I've never used Mandrake, but I would hope that they would open up a root shell on a spare virtual console during the install. To switch VCs, you use ALT+F1, ALT+F2, etc.--unless you're in X, in which case it's CTRL+ALT+F1, etc. You're looking for either a shell prompt (probably ending in "#" to indicate a root shell) or a login prompt (login as root, shouldn't need a password).

But before going through all of that, couldn't you just hook up a IDE CD-ROM drive long enough to do the install?

--John