The IDE disk was originally partitioned into three: one for swap (2GB as /dev/hda3), one for / (4GB as /dev/hda1) and the rest for /home (14GB as /dev/hda2. After a year or two of use the / partition was full! Generally, use the whole disk for / as is recommended by the Debian Installer.
The second install (23 March 2004) followed the standard path, but with noapic.