Thanks for all the suggestions on a distro. First I have a simple problem, and I think the solution is probably simple.
Seems the first step should be to get lilo to boot a live distro from a CD. How do I set up lilo to do this? Does it know how to control a CDROM? Maybe I'm missing something obvious?

I have previously tried GRUB-which did not work. Then I tried PLOP, which was a FLOP. It hung up and I had to reboot, fortunately the MBR was still intact.

I am not a total newbie, but would call myself a beginner. I am trying to install Linux (not picky which distro) on an old PC which does have a CD drive but will not boot from it. (Please don't tell me to get a newer PC-I have several already-I'm recycling) I finally found an old Slackware cd and managed to install it from floppy. I use LILO so I can boot dos or Slackware of the HD. My original goal was just to create a RS232 terminal to use in developing code for a microcontroller. (The ucontroller's output is RS232.) Anyway, I would like to install a newer distro, It seems that I should be able to do this since the existing linux can access the CD drive (as can the Slackware bootdisk). Can anybody walk me through this?