I am happy to report I now have my core up and running beta2. Thanks to tkmedia for the assistance and for putting up with my "what's an irc? is it apt-get or wget?" type questions. Here is a run down of what I needed to do in order to correct some problems I had with DVD install.
Downloaded Kubuntu 8.10 i386
burned it to a cd
installed it on SCSI3 ( sda)
I used 'guided - use entire disk
got to desktop and opened a terminal
sudo su
apt-get update
wget -c
http://deb.linuxmce.org/ubuntu/new-installer-beta2.5.tar.gztar xvf new-installer-beta2.5.tar.gz
cd new-installer
./pre-install-from-repo.sh
./mce-install.sh
./post-install.sh
reboot
Ran through AVWizard and I was up and running
First problem:inserting a DVD gave me an error message about missing DVDCSS library
alt+ctrl+f2
opened a terminal
sudo apt-get dvdcss2
reboot
SolvedNext issue:
Trying to get to kde desktop gave me a "could not start ksmserver" error
I found a link to work around this and get what sounds like a stripped down desktop environment but I was unable to get it working before I had to head to bed. I will post my command and success when I get home tonight.