SuSE 9.1 Install?

[John O'Brien at itazuke.org]

I just got done (I guess) installing SuSe 9.1 on a
Pentium 1 133mhz.  
I can't believe the slow response of the system.
It's at least 5 times slower than the Windows system
which was previously installed on it.
Did I do something wrong?
First, the CD's wouldn't boot from the CD drive
so I created a boot floppy and after many failures
I went back and RTFM and found I also had to make
a modules floppy also.  So, I got it installed; it took
like two hours and I went away while it was installing
and when I came back it had finished, but had
shut itself down because I wasn't there when it got
done.  Now the only way it will boot is from a floppy
and root doesn't have a password (which I can fix)
but everything I try to run (like YaST2) takes 4 or 5
minutes to initialize and another 5-10 minutes to 
actually install anything (one at a time) from CD 2 or
3.
It's really frustrating.
Start over from scratch?
John