I tried the following, which did change things but did not result in a working console at the end of the boot:
- added "gop set 2" in /boot/loader.conf. mode 2 was 1024x768 and seemed to display fine in the loader prompt - moved the i915_load="YES" to /etc/rc.conf and removed drm_load="YES" entirely. It loads anyway, as you said. - Tried both removing the kern.kms_console=1 from /boot/loader.conf and leaving it in. With those changes, the top part of the screen is no longer garbled and more output from the boot is shown. But the output stops after: RPM wakelock ref not held during HW access<4>RPM wakelock ref not held during HW access<6>[drm] taking over the fictitious range 0xe0000000-0x10000000 [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20171023 for dev_name on minor 0 In the dmsg, right after those lines is: kms console: xpixels 1366 ypixels 768 That's a different resolution than was set with gop set earlier. Not sure if that is significant. Chuck
