Hook up the HD and go into BIOS and see if the BIOS sees the HD. If it does, OK.
If no, the ide cable to the HD to mother board may be shorted out too, It does
not take much to hose the cable. Next is to check out the CD rom drive. It may
be the matter of being cleaned or it is going out. I think it is the matter of
being cleaned up with a CD or DVD clean cleaner disk. Or a nice can of air. If
you have a long Q tip, dip it in achole and whip off the laser. All so the ram
can be going bad. Ram for the old boxes new are cost quite a bit and find one
used may be the best route. It is a old box and things can be just going out.
All so put in mind it lived this far for a PII. All so did you look at the boot
sequence and make sure that the order of boot is CDROM first? If you have a
spare CDROM around slap that in and see if that goes. If the CPU is going out,
the machine is going to poop out here and there.

The HD is working fine. The boot grub loads but when the os starts to
load the PC crashes and restarts. The box is 10 years old but I
thought I may use it as a router/gateway. It was running Windows 95
just fine.

CPU is bad! If it load up any O/S and crashes out and reboots. The CPU has had
it. Now what to do with the spare parts. Sell the ram on Ebay, save the HD, take
the mother board, go to a hardware store, buy some clock parts, a pack of AA
batteries, drill out a hole in the middle, assemble the clock parts, and it
makes a nice wall clock. Not to say a good conversation starter. Or sell mother
board clock on Ebay. The CD Rom and Floppy, keep them in case some thing craps
out. The metal and plastic of the case can be recycled. Unless your are really
handy are you can transform it to a portable grill. The power supply. Well you
can sell that on ebay too. The power supply can only be used by that type of
mother board. Leave up to your imagination what you can do with it.
If you are planning to chuck out the whole system. Take out the HD regardless.
You do not need for some one to pick up your old PC and take the HD and get
personal information from you. Unless you want to open it up and see how it
works. Then take a hammer to the disk in the HD before throwing it away. Or take
the disk out of it, get some clock parts, and make a nice bathroom clock. The
disk are really cool to look at. Yet, hook it up to a working PC and take needed
data and use Wipe
http://dban.sourceforge.net/
The monitor. Well, you never know when you are going to need one. You cannot
recycle the monitor. It contains mercury and you'll may have to shell out some
bucks to properly dispose it. Unless you know a band that would love to smash on
stage. Or you live in a high rise apartment and would like to see what happen
when you drop it down to the side walk. Halloween is coming up and you can make
some thing cool. Or you can see what happens when you take a high power magnet
to a monitor when it is on. Or leave it on the curb and say FREE on it.
The IDE cables, you can save them too. I had IDE cable crap out on me and thank
goodness I had a extra one handy.
Sorry to tell you the bad news, but I gave you lot of tips to get some money
out of your old PC. Like the clock idea and ram on Ebay. If you live in states
and and want to pick up a cheap used PC.
http://mcbia.com/
I buy from them all the time. You can even call them and see if they have any
PII CPU for sale. I live like a 30 minute drive from them. They all ways treated
me really good too.

OK PS have your tried Damn Small Linux or Deli
http://www.delilinux.de/
http://damnsmalllinux.org/
If the floppy works on it, you can load them up and save it.