Juanito,
since i installed tinycore to the new hard drive, i installed gimp1 again, and this time there is no problem at all. the gui interface came right up. should i ever have a problem with gimp1 again, i will keep your suggestion in mind. i'll bet that same fix works on other programs as well (of course, the name would be different).
aus9,
when i do a computer task, often i take the long way. to make a long story short, i removed the front piece, the floppy/hard drive carriage, and the two decks and discovered the cd deck was jumpered as slave (the one that wouldn't boot a disk or install an OS and was at the end of the ribbon cable). it makes me wonder if i ever really did successfully play any disks with it, how could i? it doesn't seem like it would work.
i have too many computers.
maybe i have it mistaken for a different computer.
even after trying every possible jumper configuration, that memorex still wouldn't boot to disk or install. i immediately got an error message (error 16). it was indeed defective. it was a "general purpose" computer at a not-for-profit agency. young people abused this computer and it was badly infected when it was given to my wife. i cleaned the infections, took the hard drive out, and now it's a linux machine.
i hunted down another cd drive and now it's 100%. your suggestion caused me to look the machine over.
thanks for both replies.