I have a couple of options for connecting the HD. Right now, I
can use an external drive attached to the USB port, or I can get a PCMCIA-to-IDE
adapter and hook a 3.5" drive up to that as the BIOS does support booting from a
"card". I do not know whether or not the PCMCIA port would be any faster than
the USB 2.0 port.

My main use of this machine will be to use it as a PVR. As I recall, the last
time I ran Ubuntu on this machine, I had to use ndiswrapper to get the wifi to
work, so I think this rules out running a live CD from a USB stick or from a CF
card in the PCMCIA slot, but I could be wrong.

I have tried my GRUB CD and it does indeed boot, but I cannot yet confirm that
it transfers to the USB port.