Most architectures have some way of doing printk()'s before
console_init().  x86 doesn't.  x86_64 has a self-contained serial and
vga driver that do the trick.  This could easily be a multiple
architecture thing, but I didn't want to clutter up generic code with
things that no one else is ever going to use.  

The ugly part here is the de-static'ing of the console init functions,
and trying to keep the serial init function from running twice.  The
other part that I don't like is getting the console= part at config
time.  But, getting arguments parsed this early requires some invasive
surgery in early boot.

Although it _is_ ugly, it's also pretty small.  Martin Bligh has
promised to add vga support too.
-- 
Dave Hansen
haveblue@us.ibm.com