How can I disable the Machine Check Exception?

[lauritzen at hawaii.rr.com]

A while back I posted about my problems installing Mandrake 8 and Redhat 7.1.
 Redhat 7 works fine... blah blah blah.

I think I've narrowed the problem down to this:  Kernals since 2.2.17 have had
Machine Check Exception enabled - I guess the kernal checks to see if the processor
is complaining about a faulty condition or something.

The distros that I have been able to install are slackware 7.1 but not current,
and Redhat 7, but not 7.1.  The thing that Slack 7.1 and Redhat 7 have in common
are kernal 2.2.16.  All the others that crash use a more recent kernal.

I've found some boot option howto's but they are all older than kernal 2.2.17.
 In a search on deja I found that unix offers a boot option that disables this
machine check exception.  

Is it possible that there is a boot option that disables this machine check?
 If there is, when I find it I'll be up and running with the distro of my choice.
 Can anyone tell me where I would find such current documentation or how to
get in touch with a kernal expert?

Mahalo,

Eric