Near the end of the 'make oldconfig' I got into an endless loop. I never
even got a chance to make a choice, it just continued looping on the
display.

<snip>
    RomFS backing stores
    > 1. Block device-backed ROM file system support (ROMFS_BACKED_BY_BLOCK) (NEW)
    choice[1]: 1

This permits ROMFS to use block devices buffered through the page
cache as the medium from which to retrieve data.  It does not allow
direct mapping of the medium.

If unsure, answer Y.
</snip>

The old config is attached.

Cheers,
FJP