Hey folks. I've been hacking on the i386 vesa_raster8 code in 
arch/i386/bios/ for the past few days. I have it attaching to wsdisplay 
and working as a default console. Some nice parts:

  * Splash screen support in the vesarasterviii driver
    (This will be moved to dev/rasops at some point)
  * If the kernel panics while X is running, you can still interact with
    DDB. Yay!

Anyway, it's a work in progress, but feel free to play with my patches in 
the meantime. More information is available here:

   http://www.invisible.ca/core/VESA_Framebuffer_console_in_NetBSD

Cheers,
Jared