downloaded the two rootdisks, install.2 had no problems, install.1 on the other hand, did, tried downloading the umsdos based bootdisk, have no idea how to set that up, any help would be appreciated

What seems to be the problem with it?

The first thing I would suggest is to go right out to the store and buy a box of fresh floppies if you haven't already. A floppy cannot be trusted for very long, if you are using floppies you had laying around, the problem is almost certainly a bad floppy (even when I buy new ones from the store, a few are DOA).

I just installed Slackware current on one of my machines using the floppies, and it took 3 different floppies before I could make a usable install.1, so I would just keep trying.

Also, make sure your drive is clean and functioning properly.

i doubt its the drive or disk, tried several different disks and drives, the image seems to be giving a write error

"controller has faileddetector: 4"

oh, and im using rawrite, if that helps

It could have been a corrupted download I suppose. The MD5 for my working install.1 image is:

f744321f0ed49f9e4b628a594524cf71

That match yours?

And just to be clear, you are unable to write the image at all?