vesafb not loading during boot and lilo gives no video modes

hello,
Ive been building a clfs system, and have been racking my brain around
as to why vesafb is not loading at boot.. using any option in
lilo.conf
(vga=normal,893,ask) gives nothing but the no modes found.

under dmesg on the machine that doesn't work I see
[    0.000000] Console: colour EGA 80x25

and on the good machine(same setup older packages)I see
[    0.000000] Console: colour dummy device 80x25

is there something Im missing in userspace to cause lilo to not
respond to vga‰3, ask, normal but only go to EGA?

-- 
Justin P. Mattock