Screen sleep/blanking on etch console doesn't work?

[Curby <curby.public@gmail.com>]

I finally dist-upgraded my PPC Mac Mini to etch as recommended by the
etch release notes, and there are two monitor-related changes:

1) I only run in console mode, and never start X.  In console mode, it
used to be the normal 25x80 character display, but it now uses a much
higher density display with more rows and columns shown.  This isn't a
problem.

2) The screen doesn't sleep like it used to.  I use an LCD display,
and while the screen blanks, the sidelight doesn't turn off (and can
be seen to bleed through in a darkened room).  This is my main
concern, as it will decrease the life of the LCD sidelight.

What caused these changes, and what configuration file should I modify
to revert/change them?  dpkg shows I have some x11 packages installed,
as the php-gd package depends on them:

ii libice6     1.0.1-2
ii libsm6      1.0.1-3
ii libx11-6    1.0.3-7
ii libx11-data 1.0.3-7
ii libxau6     1.0.1-2
ii libxdmcp6   1.0.1-2
ii libxext6    1.0.1-2
ii libxpm4     3.5.5-2
ii x11-common  7.1.0-19
ii xlibs-data  7.1.0-19

However there's no xorg.conf or anything relevant that I can see in
/etc or /etc/X11.  And anyway, this is supposed to just be a standard
console, not X.

Thanks!

--Mike