SCO-Unix - booting to single user mode and then crash

[Willy Paine]

    My Lab is running SCO Open DeskTop and I don't know what happen 
    to this.  It was shutdown at this and I turned on this machine.
    It booted clean included no fsck at all but... 
    
    When it goes to SINGLE USER MODE, it displays:
    
    -------------------< display >----------------------------------
    
    Type control-d to proceed with normal startup,
                                                ( or give root passwd
    for system maintaince.
    
    ----------------------------------------------------------------
    Then it freezes or crashs and I can not press <return>.  Notice there
    is no real linefeed between "startup," and "(or give"
    
    How can I upgrade this from disk instead of installing from scratch?
    I tried to figure it out how to access to hard disk from floppy disk
    on SINGLE USER MODE.   I can do this with REAL System V (Interactive
    386/ix or Interactive Unix 2.2) but not for SCO Unix.   I think this 
    could be a problem with rc area.  I tried to boot from unix.old but 
    no luck.  Would like to know how to boot from floppy (N1/N2) and
    mount hard disk on floppy's /mnt if any.
    
    Thank you for your time.
    
    willy