Power Mac 5400/120 problems or should I even try?

[Aaron Stroeh]

I got a old Power Macintosh 5400/120 with almost max amount ram and a 
new quantum fireball ex 4.3 GB hard drive and a 10 ethernet card not 
sure what it is. I can look into that if you think that is the problem.

Anyway I installed Mac OS 8.6 on the 2nd partition(500 MB) and the 1st 
is unallocated(the rest about 3610 MB) that's where I'm going to try to 
put yellow Dog 3.0.1 and I got bootx installed the way the "A companion 
to Installing Yellow Dog Linux 3.0.1" pdf told me.
Other info is Hard Drive IDE ATA set as master and CD-Drive 4X is scsi 
not sure what jumper settings are right now on the CD-Drive if any, 
haven't looked.

Now the problem, I have better luck when I catch Bootx before the Mac 
OS 8.6 is fully booted and I get this far in the linux load up screen 
before the installer interface would get there. Also I left bootX with 
no video driver option unchecked and everthing else is checked and 
force scsi and video didn't matter if their checked or not:
ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A
unable to identify CD-ROM Format
VFS: Can't Find ext2 file system on dev loop (7,0)

Also I got the Yellow Dog 3.0.1 disc #1 in the CD-Drive

  I can hear the CD-ROM starts to kick in before them last lines, but 
the os and computer seem like they just can't wait for the information 
to flow from the CD Drive. Also the YLD disc 1 has mounted in OS 8.6 
ever time and used to install on a G4 but never got my LCD to work with 
it on my G4. But anyway after them lines of information there is 
nothing, plus the computer is froze up and I have to do a 
(control-apple-power) to get anywhere after that.

But if let OS 8.6 totally boot before Bootx I have check the NO video 
driver option or I get stuck at the first text screen that pops up. And 
under options I have to unchecked the force video box, and force scsi 
didn't matter what I set it at didn't seem to do anything for me. I 
left the "Use specified RAM disk checked" which was looking at my 
ramdiskimage file in the system folder.

If I left the force video box checked I would only get this far and/or 
if unchecked the ramdiskimage would get only this far:

QUANTUM FIREBALL ex 4.3A, ATADISK DRIVE
.
. other lines of linux loading
.
Partition check
hda:

That's it! Even if let it set for 15 minutes or more. I had to force 
restart the computer for nothing was going to happen.

So any ideas or I'm wasting my time?

Stroeh