Mike Miller cried from the depths of the abyss...
>
> Ah, ha, ha -- I figured it out.  The tech at Gen Nano had left the Nvidia 
> RAID (fakeRAID?) enabled, and that was screwing it up.  With RAID disabled, 
> it sees grub and it boots.  After that it does not go to Gnome -- it just 
> goes to a console text prompt.  Any idea why I don't get gnome?
>

These nvidia boards usually have 3 optins:  RAID, ACHI, IDE/SATA

Play it safe, and use the native IDE/SATA setting.  This will not require 
additional drivers (as with Fake RAID & ACHI)