Thank you,
xlnagla, that was a good call, and we have tried it out, with a few variations.
Should have worked, but
exactly the same thing happened.
It may be that recent kernels are struggling with the ATI 200 integrated graphics - Ubuntu 904 runs using Xvesa, but Xorg dies the death. Ubu804 works fine with both.
It seems that ATI may have removed the 200 from their latest driver, and this causes a problem with recent kernels.
Have installed MythBuntu 8.04 since I can make the old ATI driver run, and we were pressed for time. Will be living out of a suitcase for some days now, home next week.
Thank you for your help! Would still like to get a Sabayon install running, and will try my own Sempron/nVidia box which has space on the 2nd HD.
This often confuses GRUB, but am learning to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst so that extra distros boot happily. An ancient P3 laptop boasts 9 distros now, makes for some interesting comparisons.
Need to finish off the Myth TV config for my friend first.... I may be at it a while!
All the best, Ben