With nouveau(fb)0 the screen becomes black as soon as the kernel message about nouveaufb0 is dispayed. Earlier (7.99.42) version works fine. On -current Xorg is starting in the background (one can confirm the process list after a ssh login), but the screen remains black. I haven't yet come to see if by any chance the output is directed to the external VGA port. So far I build a kernel without nouveau(fb), which boots and the console is usable in text mode or with mlterm-fb, but Xorg does not start (some weird message about not being able to start with a kernel-bound driver or similar).
At the same time I have a separate desktop with a NVidia Quadro 600 card which works just fine, with the level of acceleration nouveau provides.
Go figure...
Chavdar