Figured it out.
The system is set up with master boot HD, secondary master HD, and cd slaved to secondary.
Win 98 on master.
Set up ME on secondary, won't get BIOS calls for IDE controller using IRQ's 14 and 15 because the secondary is on the secondary.
I (temporarily) change the drives and installed ME on primary with CD as slave, all is well.
I guess ME
MUST be the primary master HD, or it just won't work right.
Now to find drivers for my Mustek scanner/SCSI card...
