Sometimes IDE CD-ROM drives will not be detected either due to the fact that they are on a IDE channel the BIOS doesn't know about, or that when queried, replies back with data that Linux thinks is bogus. To solve your problem, you need to specify the the CD-ROM drive from the LILO boot prompt. If you need to do a hard drive installation due to some problem with your CD-ROM, you will need to follow these steps. From there you will need to copy the items from the CD-ROM over to the hard drive. Once you have done this, you can start the installation and choose a hard drive install.
Laptops are one of the hardest pieces of hardware to support in the industry.
Many times the company that constructs the hardware has to tweak a chip-set to make it fit in the confined structure or meet certain power requirements. The boot disks shipped do not have the driver for ICP Vortex turned on in the early stage of the installation. The problem was that none of the ICP Vortexes we tested on would allow for this configuration, and so we assumed that it would be for all such ICP controllers. After the install is completed the CD-ROM on the ICP Vortex will be recognized and usable. Once you have downloaded the driver and followed the directions at our FAQ on writing it to disk, reboot using the boot floppy.