Thanks for all the excellent and quick responses!

This gives me something to work with...if all goes well I can try the
install and see if the drive is recognized without additional drivers, or
can do the slipstream or external floppy if needed. I have a retail copy of
XP from a dead machine (with SP2 already slipstreamed), so cost isn't an
issue, should it not work out.

Re the cautions: I know there's a possibility of things not working due to
drivers (this is a Gateway, and I haven't found ALL the xp drivers yet, but
am still looking for older machines with that same hardware and XP drivers).
This is why I want to be sure to have a good disk image made just before I
format. If I don't find the drivers, or it has too many issues, I can live
with Vista, though I may wear out my finger from clicking "yes, I really do
want to move that shortcut into that folder" or "yes, I really do want to
run that program" so many times 8^).

Performance-wise, it seems like this machine "feels" about the same as my
older 2003-model Gateway laptop with 1 GB and XP, and a Celeron, where this
one has a dual core Intel and 2 GB, so the extra power is just probably
running stuff I don't need, instead of giving me nice zippy performance.

Gary