I no longer run the crashing vesa driver, but have instead a manually kludged up installation that works with i830 stuff. Unfortunately, the machine has stopped booting from anything except the hard disk, which means I'm not going to play with it in any way that may jeopardize its bootability until I have a new laptop. This, alas, includes trying any new X servers.
However, since i830 stuff now works, the vesa driver isn't necessary, so I assume it's okay to close the bug, if you wish.
