console blanking and cdrom issue

[Vikas BN <pandita.debian@gmail.com>]

Hi folks,

  I installed Sarge from a DVD, then "dist-upgard"ed to sid.

 After that i installed the 2.6.14 kernel image. Now i have 2 issues,

 1. i changed the "kernel" line in /boot/grub/menu.lst 
  from 

           /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.14-1-686 root=/dev/sda6 ro


  to

         /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.14-1-686 root=/dev/sda6 ro vga=791
    Now the console blanks, and i can't see any thing on the 
   screen until gdm comes up.
 
 2. now, my cdrom also doesn't seem to work!

  System details:
  Dell D610 latitude
  Pentium M 1.73GHz. with ATI M24 video card.

  Debian Sid
  uname -r == 2.6.14-1-686
 
  Any ideas?

-vikas