The first oddity with this Toshiba Satellite S1800-700 is that a
kernel with agp freezes after printing the agp at pchb0 line.
Removing agp gets a booting kernel - does that matter?

Oh - it's a 27 Apr kernel, 22 Apr userland, 1.6.2 downloaded X sets.

Next problem is that xf86cfg seems to create a sensible XF86Config
file with dbe, extmod, glx, record, xtrap, speedo, type1 modules,
and detects a Trident CyberBlade/i1. But all that is visible on
the screen is the cursor prompt in the top left hand corner, with

  PID USERNAME PRI NICE   SIZE   RES STATE      TIME   WCPU    CPU COMMAND
  106 root      58    0  8256K 7424K RUN       28:18 99.02% 99.02% XFree86

No response to ctl+alt+backspace.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Patrick