/dev/lp0: No such device

[Dave Sherohman <esper@sherohman.org>]

I've built myself a 2.4.5 kernel with parport support, but it appears
to be broken, as any attempt to print (whether to /dev/lp0, lp1, lp2,
par0, par1, or par2) results in the error "No such device".
/var/log/syslog records the message "modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate
module char-major-6" even though the support is built-in, not a
module:

CONFIG_PARPORT=y
CONFIG_PARPORT_PC=y

The port is detected at startup:

parport0: PC-style at 0x378 [PCSPP(,...)]
parport_pc: Via 686A parallel port: io=0x378

and appears in /proc/ioports (0378-037a : parport0), but does not
appear in /proc/interrupts.

I dug around a bit on google and found a mailing list message listing
near identical symptoms under 2.4.0-test4, but it was supposedly
fixed in 2.4.0-test5.

So where do I go from here?