got vesa framebuffer console working
 

When I enabled video mode selection support I got a blank screen. Here was my fix. If you enable Prompt for development and/or incomplete drivers in the code maturity level options section of menuconfig, you can access framebuffer support in the console drivers section. I then enabled the VESA VGA graphics console option and poof it now works. Make sure you have vga= whatever in you lilo.conf file.