Oh also: you can have scrolling booting text right now, just modprobe the fbcon module early in the boot of the kernel in question. See the other pali thread, "kernel-power patches/updates", for explanations on how. (The edit bootmenu.sh way will work when you boot with keyboard out, the edit preinit way works regardless of keyboard state, so just a matter of what you want.)

Also, I must say, while the bootmenu.sh way is still not fully within my aesthetic (I like the console running on all boots, keyboard in too; though I'll be honest, I can see why most people would want it optionally activated only on keyboard open, and I myself am unsure if I'm ultimately going to settle on the bootmenu.sh or preinit approach), knowing that I can safely experiment with code in bootmenu.sh is wonderful - makes it so much easier to figure out how to give myself a command-line at early boot while knowing that my N900 won't need to be reflashed if I mess up, as I can just boot normally with keyboard out. Definitely safer than editing /sbin/preinit.