Now to ponder what comes next. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Hi Dale, did I see in one of your early emails you created an xorg.conf for nvidia?  Have you followed the gentoo Xorg guide where it says to try first without that file?  I doubt the knoppix etc use a conf file and so must depend on the auto detection.

Based on my own experience I can say using an xorg.conf (though it was a radeon card) is an easy way to shoot yourself in the foot!

BillK