While tracking down a sound problem, I decided to compile in the
soundblaster rather than use modules. It's been a long time since I
ran sound under linux, but that used to work fine.
I watched the reboot, noticed the usual isapnp stuff (part of problem)
...
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
Limiting direct PCI/PCI transfers.
Activating ISA DMA hang workarounds.
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: Calling quirk for 01:00
isapnp: SB audio device quirk - increasing port range
isapnp: Card 'Creative SB16 PnP'
isapnp: 1 Plug & Play card detected total
...
and then noticed that there were no soundblaster messages and tried to
scrollback to verify. Pressing Shift-PageUp did absolutely nothing.
The only change was to move from modules to compiled for sound, OSS,
and soundblaster. Booting the previous kernel(s) showed a working
scrollback. 2.4.4-pre6 compiled under gcc 2.95.3 20010315 release.