Well, this changed things around a bit.

When I tried booting with both settings (kernal 2.6 AND noscsi) the ADSL/PPPOE config client did pick up eth0, but kept timing out, and the browser was unable to find any hosts (I did check the cables to make sure they were secured when this happened).

When I tried booting with just the 2.6 kernal and scsi support it froze on the same line, but different text came up before it froze:

Probing SCSI...avansys.o

I wasn't sure if this was really significant, but I suppose any info I can give stands a chance of helping.