I and others with similar hardware (Asus Eee PC 1008HA) have seen it happen that in the early boot stage of the kernel the screen turns all black, with a light grey (or white?) bar at the top left half, at which point the boot process stops.
This happens often if I use just "-v" or even just the boot option "Graphics Mode = no". And it appears to only happen if there is no special graphics kext found, i.e. the default family driver is used.
I suspect something goes wrong setting up the graphics mode then, maybe caused by the default graphics kext.
Whatever the reason, I like this to be known as a potential problem.
