Error -- init panic

Hi
I am trying to execute the ELKS on Toshiba 1100+ laptop with 8086 processor and 640K RAM. I loaded the latest ELKS image (comb_net) on a 1.44MB floppy formatted as a 720KB floppy (because my Toshiba laptop can read only 720KB floppies) and I get the following error while booting :

init panic
hd: error: AX=0x0
BIOSHD: i/O error
dev 380 , sector 142
init panic
:
:

this keeps repeating... I tried loading /boot and /root on separate floppies, but the booting gives other types of errors then. Is there any fix for this?
MSDOS seems to work on the laptop, so there is nothing wrong with the floppy drives.