Thanks for the response, unfortunately I had all of those packages installed. I was actually about to post another cry for help on some newsgroups but... after a few more apt-gets, fixing a link or two, and swapping xdm for gdm I have a functionall X setup. So I now have a full reiser debian potato (about to be woody again) setup. Now I have a ton of work to do to put everything back the way it was before I got bored 8^).
jt P.S. If anyone is interested I thought I would provide the link to the reiser potato install disks/info page (they ARE NOT officically supported)... <http://home.psouth.net/~jjk/projects/reiser-debian/> Thanks Jeremy Koch for your good work!
