that said . . .
As you say, it sounds like an addition to your menu.lst file is needed.Is there any parameters I can pass to use usb/sata ?
You might look around at:
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/BootParams
So what setup are you in exactly right now? For example, earlier you pulled the harddrive? What machine is it in now? Which machine is it having the errors in? (basically trying to figure out if the problem is with the sony viao 64mb ram, or is a "generic" install problem)
Is it in a USB-powered caddie or directly installed into the other machine? What are the specs of machine b?
Were you able to get puppy running on the live CD first?
And, if you switched the harddrive from one sort of setup in computer A to another setup in Computer B, you might need to edit menu.lst since the installer would try to match the computer you were originally using. (unfortunately, if you've already moved the harddrive, this might mean uninstalling again to be able to edit the file)
On my older machines, I always need to put in the parameter acpi=off or a varient like pci=noacpi
As I said, I hope this is helpful, even though its a beyond my paygrade