I kept having trouble getting the framebuffer to work with my compiled 2.6.9 kernels. If vesafb was compiled as a module, I'd get a blank screen. Compiled statically, I'd get garbage.
After a day's worth of googling, I found that there seems to be a bug in the vesafb.c code. I also found this fix: replace the Debian kernel-source-2.6.9/drivers/video/vesafb.c with the vesafb.c from the vanilla 2.6.9 kernel source.
I did this. Compiled vesafb statically. I have framebuffer. And bootsplash.
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