Startup screen not very Mac-like

All --
Received my new MacPro for work (whew, what a machine) -- while it seems to work great, the startup sequence is a bit disconcerting -- instead of the grey screen/Apple logo/twirly clock thingy, I get a black screen with white text looking very DOS-like (okay, maybe more UNIX like). It starts up okay, but the text-based startup gives me the willies...
Is this normal? Any ideas/corroborations would be helpful.
Mike
Note: Specs = Intel 2.66, 2 G RAM, 500G HD, GeForce 7300GT, 23" cinema display, 2xSuperdrives; EFI firmware patch completed
B&W G4/500 (OWC ZIF) Rev. 1 Mac OS X (10.2.x)

PRAM is Parameter RAM which is basically a small piece of battery protected memory that holds data that needs to be maintained while the system is shutdown that affect the system as a whole. Things like date and time settings, video settings etc are held here. For more details see this Apple Knowledge Base Document…
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86194

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http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379
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Startup screen not very Mac-like

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