Has anyone put together any kind of script that can parse the boot.dmesg 
and build a config file with only the devices needed? Obviously, there 
is stuff that would still be manually configured - compatibility, 
filesystems, network - but it would make getting started on a new kernel 
for a new machine much easier.

I'm sure that this is something that could be whipped out by a decent 
perl programmer in a few hours - unfortunately for me, I am not a perl 
programmer. (and thanks for the forthcoming suggestions that I learn.)

  -Buckaroo