new ati driver [vs] new kernel problems
 

Alright, I've gone all through google.com and through rage3d.com and linuxquestions.com. I found the ATI HowTo on Rage3d.com to be the best of the best, but unfortunately, didn't help me. Here's the relevant parts of my system:

AMD AthlonXP 1700+
nForce2 mobo platform
Slackware 9.1
Dropline Gnome 2.6 (uses x.org 6.7)
2.6.6 Kernel
ATI Radeon 9600 XT
FGLRX 3.9.0 for XFree 4.3.0

Here's my problem:

I JUST upgraded to the 2.6.6 kernel. Previously, I had 2.4.22 along with the new ATI 3.9.0 drivers made for XFree 4.3.0 while using Dropline 2.6 w/ x.org setup. It all worked flawlessly. I never had any problems with freezing, or hangs... everything worked great. Now that I've upgraded, I've just did everything from scratch, just as I had before I upgraded to the new kernel. I didn't have any error messages or anything, but, only the MESA drivers will run when it boots up. So, I looked around and found that HowTo on Rage3d, and did everything they said... but still, I have no errors, yet run the MESA driver instead of the FGLRX ones. I've tried with the internal agp, and with the external; same results. I recently deleted my XF86Config and the xorg.conf, and replaced them with symlinks to XF86Config-4. No change in results. At one point, I deleted the xorg.conf, and didn't replace it with a symlink... and when I loaded gdm, it loaded in a totally jacked up resolution; I don't know WHAT it was using as a config. Anywho... if someone could please help me out here, so that I could get my machine to use the ATI drivers, that would be excellent.