yet another update. New CDROM drive and a newly burned and tested Knoppix CD. Yeah, you guessed it, the same thing.

So with JUST the mobo, a brand new CPU (not overheating), no hard drives, two sticks of RAM (tested seperately) and a PCI vid card this repeatedly freezes at the exact same spot.

What parameters can I use at boot to use the most generic possible video mode?

I'm ready to heave this whole system out the window but I've got $400 into it