NSLU2 hang on "Setting system clock.."

[Marc Singer <elf@buici.com>]

I've been looking for clues as to why one of my slugs would hang on
calling hwclock --show.  The initial symptom is that it fails when it
attempts to run the hwclock.sh script.

In hwclock, it is looping on this call (using strace)

  ioctl(3, RTC_RD_TIME, {tm_sec=36, tm_min=40, tm_hour=3, tm_mday=8, tm_mon=10, tm_year=106, ...}) = 0

The rtc driver seems to be starting

  x1205 0-006f: chip found, driver version 1.0.7
  x1205 0-006f: rtc core: registered x1205 as rtc0

And the kernel version is the latest (as is the version of apex).

  Linux version 2.6.18-4-ixp4xx (Debian 2.6.18.dfsg.1-9) (waldi@debian.org) (gcc version 4.1.2 20061028 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-19)) #1 Wed Jan 24 15:26:25 UTC 2007

  Kernel command line: console=ttyS0,115200 rtc-x1205.probe=0,0x6f noirqdebug

I couldn't find anything in google searches nor in the nslu2 list.
I'm stumped.

Pointers?