HD Install :: I broke X can I fix it?

I have a Compaq Armada 4131T I "inherited" with no floppy and no expansion base ( hence no cd), 32m ram. DSL 3.1.
 I do have a wireless card and it works (USR 2410 - DSL picked it right up). Odd thing is it can't use both the wlan card and my cf card at the same time  ( 2 pcmcia slots) - that's not the problem....
 Did the hd install because of the memory, and had to pull the drive and put it into my desktop to do it.
 So I got cocky 'coz DSL worked so well with a swap partition on this laptop and started futzing with the boot options, locked it up during boot.
 Now I get errors as it tries to start X:

 giving up.
  xinit:  No such file or directory (errorno 2): unable to connect to X server.

  xinit:  No such process (errorno 3):  Server error.
 dsl@tty1[dsl]$

 Searched the forums and found some similar refs, but being a noob I can't figure out the fix. a step by step would probably be my best bet if anyone cares to post it.......

  Thanx!

Mods I just realized this is in the wrong forum - Please move it
must be all the banging my head this has caused me