I guess this is more of a hardware/bios problem. but you guys seem pretty smart.

Downloaded fedora 4. checksums are good. burned isos as images. didnt boot.
used the bootstraps provided on the cd and burned a new copy. no boot.
odd.
used the original burn on two other computers. booted just fine.
checked boot order in bios everything seems fine.
used old 7.2 cd to check if I was actually capable of booting of cd with the system at all. worked just dandy.

ideas?