Well since no one seems to know the answer I hope what I have figured out will help the next poor sap who has the same problem. I actually finally got to post on yoper.com (been down allot lately) and a nice fellow pointed me in the right direction. With his reply, a little googling supplied the rest of the info I needed.
Here is how the problem got fixed:
At the grub boot menu I hit 'e' which displayed the boot script.
I then arrowed down to the "Kernel" line to highlight it and hit 'e' again.
This allowed me to edit the line. I added a space and a 3 to the end of the line and hit "enter".
Then I hit 'b' to reboot and it booted into run level 3 which does not start x.
I logged in and typed "sax2-vesa" at the prompt which started the x configurator to change my monitor and display adapter setting.
I saved the settings, finalized them, and when I was back at the prompt I typed "startx".
POOF!! x is now working!!
I hope this helps someone else.
Thanks,
sheep