Sounds like he needs a boot floppy with iso9660 support compiled in. Why it's not there to begin with is beyond me.
This seems like a really common problem with Debian installs. Someone needs a custom boot floppy in order to get their SCSI controller to work or their CD drive, or whatever. I realize that not everything can be compiled into the kernel for size reasons or whatever, but perhaps more effort should be made to make the different possibilities as easy to find as the basic resc1440.bin. Maybe a few more choices could be added in addition to tecra. aic7xxx support is one that people are often looking for, and it's in some obscure directory at debian.org. It seems like Ivan's friend has a boot kernel without CD-ROM support. Perhaps he got it from someplace beyond Debian's control, but if you need a custom kernel to boot from a CD, that should probably also be available as resc1440cd.bin or something, for the sake of morons throwing together Debain Installation CDs if nothing else. I realize that I'm in no position to criticize and that lots of people get their boot floppies from somewhere besides a debian.org mirror, it's just that in the handful of installations that I have been involved with, custom kernels were needed over half the time. This seems like a big obstacle to present to new users, and one which could scare them back to M$. It's so great when that initial kernel boots up on the first try. Really, I am extremely grateful for all the work that has gone into Linux and Debian, and I'm out here recruiting new users and will continue to do so, even if I have to compile a kernel for every one of them. Just wanted to put my two bits in. Richard Hall Network Services University of Tennessee
