When I boot the CD, before it gets to the graphical installer, I notice it 
hangs for a long time on:

hda: cache flushes not supported
hda:<4>hda: lost interrupt
hda: lost interrupt
hda: lost interrupt

It eventually gets into the installer, but all the parts where it's checking 
hardware seem to hang forever (really, ten minutes to find the CDROM), and 
once I finally get to partitioning, it fails trying to make / (after hanging 
for literally hours and letting it run overnight).

I should note that the drive is good, and this still happens after swapping it 
out.  Ooh, now I'm getting a new one, just as I type this.  No disk drive was 
detected.  If you know the name of your disk drive...  Well shit.  Also, the 
fluxbuntu installer rolls right through without a problem.  I don't even know 
how to start looking for an answer to this.  Anyone got any tips?