Utu:
Thank you. Someone suggested the xrandr option back at the time (several years ago) but the basic problem was simple ... Knoppix set up to display at 1280x1024, but my monitor would not accept anything above 1024x768 and stayed blank apart from an "Out of Range" message ... I had no other monitor available ... so I simply could not issue any command after the initial boot instruction (where the screen appeared to be at 800x600) because once the boot process started I could not see anything and thus had no idea as to what stage the boot had reached, apart from the nice lady intoning "Initating Start-Up Sequence" on the speakers. I tried alternate boots (including framebuffer) with various cheat code settings, but Knoppix resolutely went to 1280x1024 each time. After a couple of days of this, my comments were bordering on unprintable ... and then I found Kubuntu. Hey, ho. Returning to Knoppix has actually been very useful for forcing me to lose the convenience of GUI installs and get my fingers dirty in the system again ... since I first started on Unix-style systems with SCO Xenix (pobody's nerfect), which time could only be described as "interesting" ... I am finding the fun in Linux again. I may try the old monitor once more (if I can prise it off from my son's system), because I am restoring an old HP business server unit as a temporary workstation for a colleague on a limited budget ... this could get "interesting" again.

Klaus2008:
Thank you, too. Yes I found and read the manual page, but did not know how to disable the Immediate Configure. Relearning as I go. Will try with apt-get over the next few days and report back.