O.K. Here's the situation as it stands now:

I have finally configured the silly 3c509 card correctly, so now I may
use ftp, etc. 

Here is my history with this box:

Purchased box, originally configured with a 386-40 and 4 megs and an
80Megs WD Caviar.

Added second disk, a Maxtor 245Meg. My battle to disklabel this drive
prompted me to write "Disklabeling for the Compleat Idiot" which is
still a part of the FAQ, I think.

Added more Memory, and XFree86, which prompted me to get a new
monitor, since X on a hercules card is possible but ludicrous.

Ran out of disk space, prompting me to purchase another disk(Conner
CFS420a) and a GSI smart controller, which I believe screwed my
bootblocks.

Went out and got a Micronics P-90 Motherboard with integrated IDE
controller*s* (One PCI and one ISA), plus intergated fast serial
(16550) and enhanced parallel. Plus 16Megs o' RAM.

Tried to boot the old drive, but it wouldn't work. Got a new kcaha
floppy made and booted off of that. That worked, so I tried to boot
the wd0a from the floppy bootblocks. Discovered the folly of
eliminating all the 486 references in the kernel. Transferred the
kernel to the drive, rebooted, again trying to boot solely from wd0a.

Read Error

>From various seacrhing figured out that the above message cannot come
from the BIOS, because if the BIOS can't read the disk, it a) can't
write it, and b) prints out out much more verbose message as to what
went wrong, such as "Hard Disk Read Error xxx", or something like
that, according to the literature.

Also, the phrase "Read Error" appears in the sources for the
bootblocks.

Putting new bootblocks on the disk does not appear to help, though I
don't rule out a problem. The label in and of it self works, because I
can use the partitions, mount them, fsck them, copy things between my
old disk and the new, etc. I am also disinclined to believe it is a
problem with the PCI interface, given the above evidence of being
able to use it.

I am out of ideas for the moment. My plan is to blast the whole thing
and load it from scratch, as if bringing up a virgin machine. Being
able to connect to the network is a big help.

Any advice is appreciated, sorry if this was over verbose. (I was also
trying to convey roughly how much I knew about setting up things)

Thanks in advance
--
Hacksaw