[Hampshire] Video problems

I have an ATI Sapphire 1600 Pro video card I am running Mepis7 (a derivative
of Debian Etch). my Monitor is a Viewsonic VA903b.

The problem I have is as follows, the pc boots to a the normal text type
loading, then switches to a graphical progress screen, when it reaches the
end of this screen it should then switch quickly to a black then another
graphical screen where you login but it is here at this screen change that I
am having problem because the screen will go black flash and then just sit
there. I can't do anything and a hard reset is required along with a bootCD
so that I can reinstall vesa drivers.

I am currently using the ATI 8-4-x86 drivers as these driver will support my
card while the newer drivers cause a problem. I use the following
instructions (1) instructions to first make a set of deb files out of the ATI
driver package and then install them with KPackage, once installed I then use
the following set of instructions (2) to run dpkg-reconfigure to setup xorg
with the new drivers.

I know the two web site instruction are OK as plenty of other have used them
and have got there ATI card working.

So my question is, is there anything anybody can suggest?

Finally a quick sanity check, the spec for my monitor states:

Frequency F(h): 30-83kHz, F(v): 50-85kHz
(the h & v in brackets are subscript but I can't do that in kmail)

I assume that it means the horizontal refresh rate is 30-83KHz and Vertical
refresh is 50-85KHz

Thanks

Tim