Regarding partitions, just make sure they're the way you want them by launching Gparted from the live-cd or from within the installer itself.

Back, again. I did the following:
1) Verified the ISO after burning (as secipolla suggested)
2) Obtained a good used 80GB hard drive and wiped it with Marsenne Twister (dban)
3) Partitioned with gparted on install
4) Installed M8.5-686

Result: the same inability to get past the"login" prompt on shell-out with Ctrl-Alt-F1thru6

I then did as oldhoghead instructed, entered
<passwd username> & changed passwd
This resulted in the following being returned:

Linux ax-01 2.6.32-1-mepis-smp #1 SMP PREEMPT [date and time EDT] i686
Then, UserName at prompt!

Thanks, all -- I believe that did it -- muchas gracias -- THIS TOPIC IS CLOSED!