boot screen missing on 10,04 with intel graphics

[Mike McMullin]

  I'm trying to get his system ready to go back to it's owner, but I'm having 
a few issues,  First off there is no boot screen, the display is black then it 
shows a normal 80x60 scroll of ongoing processes followed by a flicker and the 
resolution changes to high.  I'd like to be able to choose the recovery boot 
option or even memtest86, so I'd also like to set the delay for the default 
boot to at least 30 seconds or so.