I feel for ya! Its difficult to offer advice, if anything goes wrong people hate you; if things go right you never hear from them again.
Well, here goes. What you need is a dual boot strategy. What you need to know is:
Processor: a pentium 233 /w 32 MB of RAM is not going to run RH 8.0 (this is the turning point* release, in my opinion) where it might run Win98.
How much hard drive space do you have? You need 2 GB free to be on the safe side.
You'll need a spare drive (of equal capacity to your windows files), copy of Ghost, a 12 pack of beer, and a bottle of asprin(for the headache your going to have.)
*turning point: don't try to catch sheep on early releases of RedHat, it was for tech geeks only, and you will only scatter them in the field.