VESA driver hangs Xorg

[Daniel Bass]

OK, I've gotten 5.3-Released installed, and worked around the firewalled 
ports to
upgrade my ports, and I have Xorg 6.8.2 installed.  The system I am 
working on has
a Radeon X700 PCI Express graphics card, but I don't need 3d, just basic 
2d graphics
X-windows support for what I need to develop.  When I try to bring up 
the X server
with the vesa driver, the screen flashes briefly and the system locks 
up.  If I set the
driver to vga X runs fine, but I get at best 800x600x8bit resolution.  

So what am I missing?  If I specify the ati or radeon driver, X fails to 
start.

--daniel