[Nix-dev] NixOS Live CD (Graphic) Boot Failure

[J. Brian Kelley]

To start, my hardware is:

Mainboard - Asrock 4Core1600Twins-P35
CPU - Intel Core2 Duo E7200
No IDE disks ( and IDE controller is disabled in Bios)
1 Sata Drive (MBR formatted)
1 Sata Burner
1 Floppy
1 Pci-e display adapter AMD HD6850

This ancient relic does seem to give many live-cd distros the 
heebie-jeebies. So far, the only one that has not required some 
intervention is Linux Mint.

NixOS is my latest foray.

First, putting the live-cd on a usb stick seems to create problems 
(whether I use UNetBootin or LiLi V2.8.30), so I burned a DVD.

Booting from the DVD starts out well, gets by the Grub loader and 
reaches the point where the screen resolution is switched. A bit past 
that I get the following three messages:

ata1: irq-stat 0x00000040, connection status changed
ata1: SError { DevExch }
ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x40000000 action 0xe frozen

These then repeat - FOREVER.

Obviously, I am a total NOOB and a Windows 7 user. As such, it is 
paramount that my Windows system remains (almost) untouched, with the 
only change being an addition to the Windows 7 bootloader selection, 
pointing to the Grub2 bootloader on my /boot partition. (Thanks to EasyBCD.)

So, if there is not an obvious fix for the error loop, could someone 
point me to instructions as how to use the Linux Mint live-cd (in all 
its KDE glory) to create a bootable NixOS Graphic system with Web access?

The CPU precludes a 64-bit virtualization approach and I cannot envision 
trying a terminal-only install without Web access to lead me step by 
step through the process.

Any input greatly appreciated.