When I boot with the liveCD, I can get to the command line (Xorg fails, but defaults to command line). When I boot from my hard drive after installation, I get a black screen and don't know how to get to the command line (or know what to do if I got there). I have tried booting from LiveCD using several resolution parameters (for example: res=1280x1024 refresh=60). If I try a resolution higher than 1280x1024, my monitor tells me to set the res to 1280x1024 and refresh rate to 60Hz. Res settings lower than this give the same results as 1280x1024 (black screen).
Monitor is hp pavilion f1703, tower is hp media center pc m470n with a p4, 3.2GHz clock, 2G RAM, video card is ATI Radeon x1650 sapphire. I tried a Gentoo installation before with the same result. I have an ATI Radeon x850 card that I put in instead and tried installing Gentoo and Sabayon with the same results.
As a side note, I did use the Gentoo LiveCD to wipe the hard drive clean of Win***s (I consider that a dirty word) and partition the drive for Gentoo during that installation.
Any help would be appreciated, as my main setup is unusable for the time being. Thanks!

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Update:
I realized that my monitor is only supposed to support 1024x768 max (even though I ran 1280x1024 just fine with W****ws). I also tried emerging ati-drivers, running aticonfig, setting the resolution=1024x768 refresh=60 hsync=0,30-83 vrefresh=0,56-76 vs=on. Same thing.

edit: I have looked at my xorg log file and nothing jumps out as being wrong, but, frankly, I don't know what I'm looking for. If someone could tell me how to copy the log file to a USB stick and post it that would be helpful.