New Debian 3.1r3 Install Hangs at agpgart with 2.6 kernel (warning: NooB)

First off... be advised I am a NooB... so please pardon my lack of grasping the possibly obvious here...

I downloaded debian-31r3-i386-netinst.iso and burned the cd. I am installing on a SuperMicro SYS-6010H, dual PIII/1Ghz/133FSB w/1Gig Ram, SCSI HD. It has an ATI Rage XL on board video controller.

After the installation is complete (selected the kernel 2.6.8-3-386) it ejects the CD, it begins starting the system. It hangs at:

Linux agpgart interface v0.100 (c) Dave Jones
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 941M

I reinstalled with the 2.4.27-3-386 kernel and everything worked fine. I did an apt-get install on the 2.6.8-3-686-smp kernel and on successful completion I did a "shutdown -r now". When GRUB came up I selected to boot from the 2.6.8 kernel, still the same problem. I restarted the 2.4.27 kernel. I went to /etc/modutils/alias and commented out the agpgart line. I did a update-modules. I did another "shutdown -r now" and this time I selected the 2.6.8 kernel. Same problem...

What am I missing? This is a server, so I shouldn't need the agpgart, as I understand it? I won't be running X on it.

The information on the server hardware can be found at SuperMicro SYS-6010H.

TIA!

Richard

PS: Sorry if I left out any pertinent information, just let me know and I'll post anything required...