Noob questions about gentoo problems

[neuromanta]

Hi there! I'm a gentoo-noob, and I have quite a few problems, one of which I would like to ask for help with. I installed gentoo on my old laptop, and on boot time it always has a 60 second timeout, because it can't load the ipw2200 firmware. I thought that I should exclude it from the kernel, but I want to make my wifi to work, which I can't. Can anyone help me? I suppose if I can fix this ipw2200 kernel module, my wifi will work and the boot time will be shorter too. Does anyone have an idea how could I make it work?
And here is another problem. I would like to configure gentoo to work as a console OS, but with framebuffer. It was a success, I could manage to install the frambuffer so now the fonts are smaller and I have a decent splash screen, but the real point of frambuffer doesn't seem to work. I tried to use a simple image viewer, XV, which is framebuffered console app as far as I know, but I can't get it to work. As I read, the w3m browser uses it to show images on webpages, but it doesn't. When I type in xv, it says:
xn: Can't open display
My DISPLAY env var is empty, so I tried to set it to :0, :0.0, or localhost:0.0, etc. but nothing worked. Any suggestions? Thanks!

[fashizzlepop]

In Arch Linux's main config file, under module to load at boot you can add a prefix of ! or @ to he module name. ! prevents it's loading when booting and @ throws it into the background and continues the rest of the boot. Check and see if gentoo has similar options.

Framebuffer is out of my scope.

[Phantom Wolf]

First off, I know nothing about Gentoo.

As for your module problem, it looks like you either need to find the firmware for your card (most distros don't ship with firmware, only the modules) and install it, or blacklist the module so it won't load. It's probably best to look for a linux-install-guide for your specific card.

As for your framebuffer problem, XV relies on X windows. You probably have your framebuffer set up perfectly fine. And, as far as I know, the DISPLAY variable is only relevant to X windows.

[neuromanta]

Good point, I'll look into it, thanks!