framebuffer configuration on NEC Versa SX

[hwestiii]

I have been attempting to install Gentoo to an NEC Versa SX laptop. The machine has a 366 PII and 192 MB of RAM and Trident Cyber 9388 video.

I performed in the initial install from the most recent Gentoo live CD (2004-3 or -4, I think). The CD sets up just fine and the install and compile go correctly as well, but I am unable to get the full use of the NEC's LCD screen. Regardless of what I do, all I get is a small rectangle in the middle of the screen with about a 2" blank band around all four sides.

The odd thing, to me anyway, is that the Live CD seems to know precisely how to handle this and makes full use of the all available screen real estate. I've been rooting around on Google and UseNet and have found many references to the framebuffer device and the "vga=791" boot settings, but none seem to make a difference. I've recompiled the kernel with both "vesafb" and "vesafb-tng" support, but detect no change.

I've also tried diffing the output from dmesg when booting from the CD and from the my self compiled kernel, but I don't see much that helps me.

Any suggestions?