> However, now that the firmware loading problem is fixed, my screen still
> goes
> black on bootup.  But now it's instantaneous instead of 60 seconds
> delayed :(
> 
> I'm back to functioning vesa mode if I boot with radeon.memset=0, but
> that's
> not really my goal...yet :p

Last time I reinstalled gentoo, I tried kms too (with my Radeon HD2600
card). And I had lots of problems with it - in combination with
ati-drivers fglrx module (blank on boot, freeze while starting X,
generell crashes and kernel panics, low performence...,...). So I
finally decided not to use kms disable everything related to kms. Since
then everything is running smoothly. Two weeks ago, I purchased an new
video card (Radeon HD7770) and gave kms another shot. And again,
everything went down the crapper. So disabled it. I can live without it
for the time being. But still, I would be interested in the "why?".