Quote Originally Posted by cozzy
tried
noscsi nopcmcia nousb noswap noapm noapic noddc

results as before.
Hmmm, btw how long do you wait? It could be that the kernel is wrong with it's fbdev (graphical text console) device settings, but that X will start correctly.

Have you tried knoppix vga=normal?

What kind of motherboard do you use? If you don't know you could install Sisoft Sandra and let it detect it.