ASCII art boot menu is slow?

[justin at shiningsilence.com]

> You all know what I am talking about when I say the ASCII art boot menu
> part? Well on 5.x on my laptop that part blinks onto the screen nice and
>  quick. However I did notice that on DF its really slow and it does it
> like... it wipes onto the screen from top to bottom line by line. I was
> just curious as to why this is? Not a show-stopper or anything :)

I always thought that was because it was simultaneously drawing out to the
serial port.  (I see it too.)  doing "boot -v" at the loader prompt should
stop that, if that's the case.  Or was that serial output removed?