None of that fixed anything, but molk works from the boot menu (well, it tries to boot, then can't bring the kernel up but I can fix that with some tinkering I'm sure), so I assume its something in the initrd of the knoppix install pegXmac installs that doesn't like the ssd.

Having looked at the amount of bugs in linux ppc from the date of that knoppix release used in pegXmac quite a few of which may be the cause of this issue, I think I will suck it in and install the newest debian that supports the peg1 and start mol from that.