boot process gets weirdly interrupted when using scroll lock

[deeptech71 at gmail.com]

During the boot process, when rc scripts (or whatever) are printing 
messages, I turn on the scroll lock. As a result, I stop hearing my hard 
drive seeking, indicating that the system isn't loading. However, when I 
turn off the scroll lock, the boot process doesn't continue. It just 
hangs at the message that was last printed before I turned on the scroll 
lock.

This happens when I turn on the scroll lock some time after "Creating 
and/or trimming log files" is printed, but before the vty login prompts 
show up.

At this point I can't use the vtys (login, switch). CTRL+ALT+DEL seems 
to properly restart the system. But if I wait for 30 seconds, a login 
prompt finally shows up.

The things to note is that (1) the text from the scripts never got 
printed, and (2) the system should have been loaded in 2 seconds, not 30.