console still works for me in 10.5.2; it’s just that there’s a log message printed over the “login:” prompt so you can’t see it (but it is there). For those who don’t know about >console, basically at the login window you enter >console as the username, with no password, and then loginwindow will exit and you get a text console. If your login window is set to show a list of users, hit the up or down arrow key to select an item in the list and then press option-shift-return. Then you can type in >console. At the login prompt (obscured by the log messages), type your username (short version), hit Return, then type your password and hit Return again.