Ok, this is too weird. While mucking around in the kernel I noticed that the scroll back buffer wasn't set. So I configured it and gave it 128 bytes to play with. Sez I, well at least I'll be able to scroll back to the start of all that verbiage. That's the only change I've made since turning USB_STORAGE debugging off.
After a reboot, dmesg behaved and gives me a complete rundown on startup all the way back to the prompt! So, since in the digital world, things don't "just happen", can someone enlighten me, or anyone else who's interested, in the connection between the scrollback buffer and usb-storage, if any? mw
