Laptops :: Old compaq armada screen playing tricks on me?

Hey there!

I've got a problem that I havent seen around here, and that worries me a bit...

the story:
I downloaded the CD and played around a bit, just to see if I liked the 'feel' of this tiny distro. And I did!
So, just tonight I did a HD install on my old armada 1573 (yes that was about the year of its birth) and everything was going fine and smooth, just as I expected.
But then:
All the lines of returning messages (loaded this, initiated that...) suddenly come to a halt. So I wait, after all this old machine is only a pentium I, with and outstanding 48 megs of memory.
No avail, so I hit enter, just to try. And voila! the screen moves up, well one line that is. After 20 or so more return and lines i find out what I was supposed to do, fill in a password! and no, enter would not do, the second time it would however (rendering an weak password error), some more errors, ending in a "too bad you exceeded your maximum amount of tries (5), so we're closing down, see ya!"

so concluding/translating:
During startup, my screen is like 20-30 lines behind. This prevents me from answering any urgent questions, like "login:| " DSL might have. So I can't enter DSL (or the GUI at least). As an indirect result of this, I messed up all the passwords you might have filled in during your first startup.:(

the questions are:
-how do I fix the screen thing? (I guess its something with the fb800x600, but as I am in HD install, I can't seem to find a way to enter this.)
-how to repair my passwords? mere 'enters' do not suffice no.

thanks you all!