Re Post #1:
Just thinking on this ancient monitor...
If memory serves, all standard vesa video modes were 4:3 aspect ratio, e.g, 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768. Now I don't doubt the ingenuity of folks to squeeze other modes out of vesa. But have you tried one of the modes above as you're reduced to the vesa driver? Personally, I wouldn't bother farting about with newer versions of anything until X stood on it's own two feet.
BTW, I think you should fix the things marked "(EE)" from post #1 and ignore all of the rest. It hasn't got a framebuffer module. Get yourself kernel modules. Most kernels land their config in /boot, so you can try
Code:
egrep 'CONFIG_FB' <kernel_config>
to see if it's there. There's a lot of false positives otherwise.
