Ok, first thing you should know is that I'm a complete linux newbie.
Anyway, I've just done a full install of slackware 9 but I'm having a few problems.
During boot, before linux starts loading properly I get an error message saying "You passed an undefined mode number." If I press ENTER I get a list of screen modes COLS x ROWS etc. Is there any way to save the selection that I make (0 - 80 cols x 25 rows)
Another problem is that for some reason when it boots I get left at a login prompt, DOS style text etc. It doesn't boot into KDE like I'm sure I set it up to during the installation. Any ideas why?
Also, after some fiddling about and reading the configuration pages on slackware.com i changed around some graphics settings and ran startx. This works and boots into KDE (I'm assuming from when I told it to use KDE during the install) however I can only see the bottom half of the screen, the top half is blank.
My graphics card is reported by the bios during boot as a STB PowerGraph 64 Video (TRIO64V+). My monitor is a Iiyama Vision Master Pro 451. Any one know what settings I should use in xf86config to get this working full screen at a decent res/colour depth?

Sorry for the number of questions but any help would be great. Thanks.

From my understanding and installation from Slackware, it doesn't configure X during initial installation, so it would have been impossible to tell it to boot to KDE during installation.
If you setup X though and it works by passing the command startx after logging in, all you need to do at this point is change your runlevel to 4 from 3 in your /etc/inittab file.
To edit your mode at boot time, just edit your /etc/lilo.conf file.

You wrote: During boot, before linux starts loading properly I get an error message saying "You passed an undefined mode number." If I press ENTER I get a list of screen modes COLS x ROWS etc. Is there any way to save the selection that I make (0 - 80 cols x 25 rows)

This is the LILO boot program that is giving this message.
You can set up your selection permanently by running a graphical boot administration program for LILO - there is probably one in your menu somewhere if you're running KDE (or Gnome?). One of the selections is to set the boot display as COLSxROWS text, or if your video card supports it, you can choose frame buffer support (like 1024x768x256) for a much nicer display. You could also just edit the lilo.conf file in the /etc directory, but since you're a newbie maybe not a good idea.

aha, got most of this sorted, thanks guys. after a lot of trial and error, mostly error, i have kde up and running.
One more thing, when I log in a random "quote" appears, where can I change this / stop it from happening?
Also, is there a way via a shell script to determine whether the login is being done on the local machine or via ssh? I would like to make some script that if logging in on the local machine then the startx command would automatically be run or if it is an ssh connection then it gets left at the console...

Thanks guys, sorry if i'm being annoying.