You wrote (in your message from Tuesday 11)
 > 
 > The simple solution, of course, is to remove the getty line for ttyE0
 > from /etc/ttys.  But it would be really nice if there were some way to
 > tell the X server which ttyE[0-7] to use;  I'd really like to have it
 > avoid ttyE0 since there might be a console message or two worth looking
 > at.  :)
 > 

This is possible with XFree86 just pass `vtx as an option to your X
server. In /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers you can use:

:0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X vt05

To force xdm to use ttyE4 (XFree86 numbers VTs from 1).  see also XFree86(1).
-- 
					Matthieu