Console troubleshooting

[jim]

Hi all,
I just installed Gentoo 1.4_rc2 on a Pentium.  Everything appears to be fine.  
Except: after booting, agetty doesn't display the message from /etc/issue or 
a login prompt.  I can ssh into the box and I can echo text to the virtual 
console.  The keyboard works because I can switch to other virtual consoles 
and do 'ctrl-alt-delete'.  'ps -A' shows agetty's running on the virtual 
consoles.  I'm about to install Red Hat 8.0 because I need to get this box 
running for a client.  Can anyone point me to some resources to troubleshoot 
this problem?

Thanks,
Jim