Re: anyone know of a resolution for the intel i915 "black screen" issue?

 are you confirming that you had the same problem, or that you can see it's fixed?

Both. At first I thought I forgot to enable something in my kernel configuration and did not care that much about it, then I saw your message and tried again with the latest git, to see the problem was fixed.

the blackout clearly started early in the boot, when the kernel tried to switch to high-res mode to continue printing kernel messages.  suddenly, with a kernel based on a pull from the latest merge window, that switch works just fine and booting is good.

Yes, this is exactly the behavior I had. Alex.