Ack! 755CX Linux Slackware install failure!

[chet@watson.ibm.com (Chet Murthy)]

The title line says it all.  I'm trying to boot from a SCSI CDROM
on an IBM Thinkpad DOCK II.  The destination machine is a 755CX,
with an 810MB hard drive.

I've followed the instructions, but obviously I'm doing something
terribly wrong, because with:

"scsi" bootdisk
"color" 1.44 rootdisk

(1) if I boot with:

boot: ramdisk floppy=thinkpad

the boot process asks me to insert the ramdisk.  At which point, I
insert the "color" rootdisk.  It then asks for that, so I just hit
return, and then the kernel panics.

(2) if I boot with:

boot: mount root=/dev/fd0 floppy=thinkpad

then it doesn't ask for the ramdisk, but it *does* die when it tries to
mount the root (again).

What am I doing wrong?  I guess this is a true sign of a newbie --
I don't have a clue what's going wrong!

Thanks in advance for any pointers,
--chet--