Bizarre! I'm glad you got things working in the end, anyway, Darren. (-: I went for years without ever compiling a kernel, but now I've discovered it's not so bad after all I wouldn't do anything else, although it helps to first find out all the details of the hardware you have in your system. That isn't to say that I don't sometimes end up doing lots of recompiles in one day trying to get options right - I was doing so just last week, in fact!
-- Mark