On Sun, 9 Jan 2011, W. Michael Petullo wrote:
Booting with "nomodeset" causes the screen to go blank. The sound coming from the hard disk makes me think that the boot process is continuing.
I don't know if it is relevant, but my boots start with a blank screen (in this build moving the mouse displays text, otherwise it eventually unblanks by itself. This is booting to run level 3.
Michael Young