Thanks for the replies, fellow slackers. I am (ahem) writing this from
pan (running on Slackware 9.1).

I re-installed and did not install the Nvidia driver, instead I just
installed the syskonnect driver to run the gigabit network port.

*Success*

The machine boots and runs just fine now. I will look for nvidia
references when I (carefully) re compile the kernel. There are some load
failures in the log relating to sound to try and resolve but sound is not
a high priority.

Everything important seems to run. Thanks again.

John.