Xorg installation

Dear alpha list,

Seems pretty quiet, but I'll try anyway.

I installed Gentoo a few days ago on a PWS500a. (says au)
I told it to emerge xorg-x11.
A simple "startx" made an effort to auto-configure.  Now it goes 
directly to a black screen with a cursor and some yellow artifacts, but 
the computer is locked up.
Xorg -configure reports failure, but it does write xorg.conf.new in the 
home directory.  Xorg -config with that file gives a black screen and 
locks up.
Either way doesn't leave any messages in the log file.

There were some "warnings" after emerge finished, but I didn't write 
them down.  I thought I'd see something on a google search, but that was 
a mistake.

FWIW, the video card is a PCI nVidia GeForce FX 5200 with 256MB.  It 
worked a couple years ago with Debian and FreeBSD alpha Xorg installations.

Gentoo packages reports xorg 1.13.4 is stable for alpha.  Any advice is 
appreciated.

Adios,  DW