grub-PC menu colors and background

[Larry T. Priest]

Hi,
I am not sure if this is in your area, but here goes.
I am running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and installed beside Windows XP.
AMD Athlon 64 PC
Ubuntu installed the GRUB-PC boot loader v 1.98.
and I ran into some issues with USB keyboard and mouse - (disabled in
BIOS - DUH)
Anyway, I discovered that GRUB could display a background image on the
boot menu...
Try as I might I could not get the darn thing to work. After a lot of
searching and reading on GRUB 2 that was not and yet was version 2. I
found that if I went into the command mode and entered:

insmod vbe
insmod gfxterm
terminal_output console
terminal_output gfxterm
insmod tga
set color_normal=red/black
set menu_color_normal=cyan/black
set menu_color_highlight=magenta/black
background_image (hd0,1)/usr/share/images/grub/Windbuchencom.tga 

I got the background colored text and resolution I was looking for.

2 Questions:

1. why do I need to "terminal_output console" first to get gfxterm to
work?

2. I could not find much on the background_image needing the "ismod tga"
loaded.

One of webpages that gave me the final clues was -
http://grub.enbug.org/FranklinPiat/grub.cfg.manpage?highlight=%
28terminfo%29


thanks for your time.
regards,
L.T. Priest