Are you sure about this? The reason I question it is that when my
motherboard went bonkers (a couple of caps blew), and it would
intermittently boot. When it did successfully boot, it was only after
it entered a loop with Verifying DMI Pool Data...

The DMI is a BIOS level database of all of the hardware on your machine.

I would check your messages again to see if it was DMI rather than DMA
which doesn't make any sense (at least to me).

Another thing to check is that since you put together this machine
does it pass the System Requirements for Linux.

I assume you have entered the BIOS and checked to see that the boot
order is set to boot first from CD followed by hard drive, leaving out
the floppy.

Also, is there another motherboard you can check the system with?

Your description somewhat sounds like there might be a hardware
problem (check the caps on the motherboard). Can't be sure though.