Oh, it might be worth mentioning - on the boots where I wouldn't see anything, adding the fbcon=map:1 parameter to the kernel command line gives a usable system - the console and X¹ both come up correctly.
¹: For X there's an additional wrinkle in that the hybrid graphics detection in gpu-detect fails to correctly identify the need for offloading, but if I have a correct Xorg.conf already in place X will run just fine.
Oh, it might be worth mentioning - on the boots where I wouldn't see anything, adding the fbcon=map:1 parameter to the kernel command line gives a usable system - the console and X¹ both come up correctly.
¹: For X there's an additional wrinkle in that the hybrid graphics detection in gpu-detect fails to correctly identify the need for offloading, but if I have a correct Xorg.conf already in place X will run just fine.