This was posted over 22 years ago; my opinions, thoughts, attitude, and writing style may have evolved since then, and this post might have been different if it were to be posted today.
got things erased and installed, now running the updates, then i can start installing my programs again. the important thing is apache works now! hooray!
i probably could have done an install over the existing installation and that might have fixed it, but at least this way i get a nice fresh install from scratch. ^-^
*pets his two hard drives* ^_^