Looks like you have drive seek errors in ddition to the lost CPU ticks. I suggest you check the memory and HD. If you can reproduce this on a later version of ubuntu after checking the hardware you should file a bug against the kernel.
** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu) Status: Needs Info => Rejected -- Pentium 3 at 150MHz!? losing some ticks (and ide errors) https://launchpad.net/bugs/66654 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs