[PLUG] Thinkpad T42, Debian sarge, and the MBR

[Evan Heidtmann]

My thinkpad was delivered yesterday morning by a friendly man in a brown
suit. I promptly installed Debian and put GRUB on the MBR. Dual boot now
works well, but I cannot get into "IBM Rescue and Recovery" by pressing
the "Access IBM" button during POST. Before the install, I could.

After discovering this, but before doing anything more, I booted to
windows and burned the "IBM Product Recovery" CDs (7 CDs in total!)

It appears from reading other people's stories that the problem with
booting IBM's special recovery application lies in replacing the
factory-installed MBR with GRUB's MBR. 

First question: does the netinst r0a debian-installer make a backup of
the MBR? If so, how do I restore it?

Second question: Are those CDs I made likely to restore to factory
condition, or might they fail partway through and leave me with no
windows, no special partition, and no Debian?

Thanks for your help,
Evan