> It strikes me that to get enough of a system up, partition, format and
> install on to a hard drive, while guarenteeing a no-swap condition, you're
> likely to exceed a reasonable memory requirement. I have no empirical data
> to back that up, so it's possible I'm suffering a rectal-cranial
> inversion. 

Since you have no empirical data to back up this supposition, consider
the following:   The NetBSD installer does not swap to its floppy, and
supposedly is capable of installing on a 2 meg system (or is it 4?).
I don't see any reason why a CD-ROM install would be any different.
granted, if you started to put together a fancy GUI, you might get
into trouble, but what you've described above should fit easily.

			       _MelloN_