"Unable to open an initial console" error on Satellite 315CDT

Guest

I'm trying to use a Toshiba Satellite 315CDT as a frontend for a simple
data collection app that runs in vesafb. I need to prune down the
kernel and upgrade to 2.6.10. The default FC3 kernel is 2.6.9-1.667,
and that works fine.

When I boot it from my custom kernel, I get the dreaded "Unable to open
an initial console". I thought I had accidentally deleted the text-mode
VGA console driver, but in this kernel it's actually impossible to
disable that driver- it shows up as "---" in make menuconfig.

Any other reason why this might be happening? Does the default install
of FC3 use devfs, and maybe I'm missing the nodes out of /dev?

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