Slackware comes with a root disk called the smart boot manager or something like that. It is something to allow a computer which can't normally boot a CDROM to boot it, as well as any other partition on any hard drive. It is called sbootmgr.dsk. I've managed to boot it before and by hitting the down arrow about 3 or 4 times followed by enter, I was able to luck into the selection for booting a CDROM. So, that may be another way to get around the problem of the floppy not being recognized by the kernel.
