Linux error 17 Linux Geek input?

OK- Put the Puppy distro on an old 500Mhz Gateway. Been having lots of fun with it. It saved that tired ol beast from a yard sale. But having tired a bit of the cartoon like interface, I wanted to step up with a graphics card, and see what the limit of this beast is. Tried 3 diff LiveCds ( Mint, Ubuntu, and PCLinux).. none of em would boot this machine. So, being tired I yanked the drive outa it and formatted it in a XP machine. Ummm.Then I got the error 17 message. Now I would think, I would need a Mbr of some kind to resolve this… But I decided to do a wipe of the drive again, in a PC running Ubuntu.. Back to the old Gateway machine… same message. Now, if the Live CDs (that are good.. btw…) load into ram, why would I need a mbr? I know I’m over looking something here. Workbench has lots of projects clamoring for attention, but I can’t let this go! What am I missing here?
See if this is clearer. I could not get ANY live-cd at hand, to boot over my puppy install, on a P3 w/ 500Mhz & 256 ram. So put the Puppy master into a pc w/ Ubuntu, as a slave. Formatted it. Back to the orig. pc, no boot from live-cd.. put the dead @ss puppy drive in a XP machine and formatted it there. Back to the orig. Pc with the twice formatted Puppy drive. Stilln won’t load a live-cd or XP. I get the infamous ” Grub loading, please wait…. Error 17″ message. The drive is good, the Cds are good.. so I try a Grub boot load floppy. Same result. Grub on a cd, same result. This is my last small drive, and really don’t wanna put any big drive in a ‘hobby’ machine. Jumpers are correct, Cds are good, How the heck am I gonna get a boot record to this thing again? Yeah yeah yeah I hosed it all up. The answer is simple I know… Changing Cd drive… BRB