on the same machine with Dell300a and INTEL 82810E video controller

the Knoppix Hacks distro boots up to X just fine, video works everything looks great.

Knoppix 3.9 won't correctly detect and set up the video, X starts but you can't read the screen at all

how can i determine the settings used from Knoppix Hacks distro and then pass those values as cheatcodes

at the boot prompt?