Several hours just for the kernel? My 233 machine isn't that slow. Mind you I did upgrade it from GCC2 to GCC3 the other week, and recompiled the whole of userland (including X, Qt, Mozilla, Galeon and Evolution, though not KDE) and it took four days. But I had a makefile for the whole shebang, so it just sat there cheerfully compiling for four days with no interaction needed.

Peter