Model 4325 (ze4325us to be exact). Looked on various sites, did not find anything relevant to this model, but similar situations for other older models. It now boots by disabling pcmcia in /etc/sysconfig and disabling legacy USB support in the BIOS (otherwise the keyboard is useless). Now to get X working....
Its frustrating that Knoppix boots so quickly and runs X with no intervention,
but RH9 does not.
I had forgotten that there was mention of a problem with pcmcia for my laptop. The solution was to change the startup file from S24 to something much lower.
From : http://home.attbi.com/~foglem/2105us.html
"In my install I found that PCMCIA services loaded at spot S24. This happens after the network and as such locked up my system during boot. To fix this; boot from the CD in rescue mode. Mount the partition you installed on and edit the etc/rc.d/rc?.d files to show PCMCIA starting at S01 or K01 (whatever your system uses. At least that's where I moved it to."
He also disabled legacy USB support in bios (as I did also).
Try looking in /var/log/XFree86.0.log for errors on why X will
not start, and if you can't figure it out, post the errors here.