Video Problems after booting 3.3

I am a newbee to linux/knoppix. I bought a bootable knoppix v3.3 CD.
Set my Bios to boot from CD. (AMD K-6 III 400 / 256MB VGA)
Started to boot, I got the initial Knoppix screen, then a black screen with
a penguin on top with many lines of what I assumed was error codes.
It had the pin cushion look..Tried manual monitor adjustment then I booted again.
Same result as I was going to write down the error messages I smell
hot electronics So I quickly shut everything down. Found the source to be my
monitor. Booted off HD okay to my normal Win98.
Now I'm paranoid to try my Knoppix CD again.
Do I just need to add a boot option for vga, screen, refresh rate, etc ?
How do I add boot options ?
Will Knoppix smoke my monitor & graphics card ?