emerging system and python won't build

[Woland]

Howdy,
I have searched near and fat to the answer to this conundrum. Of course, it is entirely possible that I just don't know where to look.

I am trying to install gentoo 1.2 on an K6-166 box which will function as a router and a low-level server. (For the curious, bootstrap took 6 hours)

The problem is that when I emerge system, everuthing goes great untill I come to installing python, and then portage quits after spewing out the output, the tail of which follows this message. I am afraid I am out of ideas (I tried emerging python itself, and that did not work with the same result) and am hoping someone will have some thoughts.

Here is the tail:

building 'binascii' extension
gcc -DNDEBUG -mcpu=k6 -march=k6 -O3 -pipe -s -fomit-frame-pointer -ffast-math -malign-double -fforce-addr -fPIC -I. -I/var/tmp/portage/python-2.2.1-r2/work/Python-2.2.1/./Include -I/usr/local/include -IInclude/ -c /var/tmp/portage/python-2.2.1-r2/work/Python-2.2.1/Modules/binascii.c -o build/temp.linux-i586-2.2/binascii.o -DNDEBUG -mcpu=k6 -march=k6 -O3 -pipe -s -fomit-frame-pointer -ffast-math -malign-double -fforce-addr
gcc -shared build/temp.linux-i586-2.2/binascii.o -L/usr/local/lib -o build/lib.linux-i586-2.2/binascii.so
WARNING: removing "binascii" since importing it failed
skipping 'parser' extension (up-to-date)
WARNING: removing "parser" since importing it failed
...done!
>>> emerge dev-lang/python-2.2.1-r2 to /
>>> md5 Python-2.2.1.tgz
!!! emerge aborting on /usr/portage/dev-lang/python/python-2.2.1-r2.ebuild .

[Woland]

Well, I solved my own problem--sort off.
I disabled all compier flags except -march=k6 -03 -mcpu=k6 and emerged python specifically. That seemed to do the trick--python emerged, I re-enabled the rest of the flags and did an "emerge system" and now my speedy k6-166 is merrily chugging along.

Of course, to me this makes no sence. The only reason I did it was that is was the easiest thing I could do to from the process a bit. I am just not satisfied---why the hell should this work? Flags that worked on Gcc and Glibc et c., would cause weird errors on python modules? It you have any ideas, I would love to hear about it.