Ok, so I think the best way to describe this is to tell you what I see on the screen. After the boot loader finishes the linux kernel appears to load and then shortly after that the screen appears to modeset. Then it stays lit up but with just a black screen, theres no text and the machine appears to be frozen.
I am still using an older r600 class Radeon 6850. I think it is getting frozen on loading the radeon KMS driver, but there is no actual indication of that, so I’m not sure.
Where can I find older versions of the livecd ISOs? I know the last time I used one was last year and it worked flawlessly on this machine, I think I can backtrack through older versions to find the latest one that still works. I google searched for an archive of some kind, but I don’t have what you would call “google foo”. 
Any help would be great, thanks.