[Raion]

I've mostly stayed out of this thread because I've been really busy but I wanted to comment on a couple things:

1. The system won't boot without graphics.

2. Have you ever replaced the real-time clock? That could be part of your problem (NIC needs to have proper MAC address to boot into miniroot)

3. It sounds to me like a ram issue. The system uses 16 bit SIMMs and they are in banks of four. Do you have to remove an entire bank to test it. What sounds like happening is it's copying the mini root and unable to commit that over to the scuzzy drive. It could also obviously be a drive failure (did you properly partition it first?)