[syslinux] Any way to boot a CD if no BIOS support & CD-ROM is not 100% standard?

[Nazo]

I originally asked in a hardware/software forum, but, got basically no
results.  It occured to me that if anyone would know, it would be you
people.  What I'm wanting to do is set up a rescue disc for a really
old laptop.  It needs to boot up a linux based CD, hopefully with
minimal to no working stuff on the harddrive (I plan to put a floppy
image to be written to a disk when needed to do the actual booting.) 
Of course, most people would be inclined to immediately answer SBM. 
However, when I try it, it is unable to detect the CD-ROM.  Really,
this CD-ROM is supposed to be a completely standard IDE ATAPI style
drive, but, I'm guessing that it's not using the standard resources
and they must be manually entered for SBM to see the drive, but, I
haven't been able to figure out what these settings are if that's true
because nothing works.

If it helps any to know the model of the laptop, it's an ancient
Toshiba Satellite Pro 405CS, which is a 75MHz Pentium.  The CD-ROM is
placed internally in a slot which is also able to double for an
internal floppy drive (I think it originally came without a CD-ROM and
the floppy internal, but, when I got it used it had an external case
for the floppy that plugs into a little connector and the CD-ROM was
in.)  Everything I read, and all the drivers and software tell me that
this is an IDE ATAPI drive.  Actually, heck, SBM is supposed to
support some types of SCSI drives, and this laptop was made around 95
while the version of SBM I'm using was in 2001, so it's not too "new"
for that (which isn't surprising.)

Really, so far the only thing I can come up with is to set up a
syslinux which directly boots the kernel, but, I really would like a
more universal solution.  It'd be nice to have something that can boot
any disc rather than only one I specifically make for the one purpose.