Setting console resultion

[14th.president at gmail.com]

>> I'm not sure why this is so hard, but I've read dozens of pages
>> and threads on setting up the console to boot into something
>> other than VGA 80x24 and I can't get anything to change the
>> resolution.

On an ancient Core Duo laptop:
/usr/src/sys/i386/conf/MYCUSTOMKERNEL: (note what's commented out)
# device                vga
# options       VESA
device          splash
# syscons is the default console driver, resembling an SCO console
# device                sc
# options       SC_PIXEL_MODE
# vt is the new video console driver
device          vt
device          vt_vga
device          agp                     # support several AGP chipsets

/boot/loader.conf: (irrelevent lines omitted)
cuse_load="YES"
drm2_load="YES"
acpi_video_load="YES"

/etc/rc.conf: (again, rear elephant lines emitted)
kld_list="i915kms"

This autodetects the correct resolution halfway (or a bit
more) through the boot sequence with a two or three sec-
ond pause while the screen is blank and then gives a
nearly un-readably small console font.  I use the good
ol' "startx" to start X, but I guess that's not relevant here.

I have a similar setup on an older Xeon (amd64) that
works pretty much exactly the same, though it runs
headless most of the time.