I have actually found the answer to this particular conundrum.
Since everything from the code, to the server are of an older flavor, it was coming from how that particular version of php was handling the controller functions. At least, this is how I got it corrected. The server is as follows, Apache 1.3.x with php running 4.4.x. The CI code base was 1.7.x.
When naming certain functions in the controllers, I finally got the httpd to throw the error into it's error_log in the form of a fatal error. After renaming the controller functions into wildly unique names, it began to work properly. They had been fairly unique before, and there were no duplicate namings. As for why this occurred, I am at a loss to explain. Nor can I explain why a clean install broke down in the default welcome.php_controller->welcome_message.php_view when a second function was added in the welcome.php controller. But, randomly altering function names fixed each controller.
