Linux "Welcome to GRUB" hang on IBM x3200 Server

I recently had to migrate a working linux/debian server image over to a "new" machine, an IBM x-Series M3 x3200 (machine type m/t 4362-PAT.)

Normally server installations of Linux are decent about body transplants across the same architectures, so I was surprised to find that the disk wouldn't boot on the new system.

The symptom was a very slow display of "GRUB" then "GRUB loading" then finally a hang on the "Welcome to GRUB" screen.

The first thing I did was boot on the Debian netinst CD for my install and choose the rescue option, and re-install GRUB onto the boot partition, but this did not fix the problem.

After further research, I cam across this post which suggested the cure to my problem: I needed to disable the graphical mode for GRUB and only use the traditional console mode boot. On my system, this was done by editing the file /etc/default/grub, and enabling the following setting:

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
GRUB_TERMINAL=console                               

After making this change, the system boots like a champ!