console framebuffer in Woody r1

[Bret Comstock Waldow <bwaldow@compuserve.com>]

I've just installed Woody r1.  (At least I was connected to an
apt-source on the net while installing and it downloaded a lot, so I
assume it's r1).

I've been using Redhat 7.3 and SuSE 7.3 before that, and I've been using
framebuffer support for my console sessions (Alt-F1, etc).

I get my 1024x768 display (128x48 text) just fine.

During install of Debian, there was a question about using framebuffer
for consoles, and I believe the answer was 'yes' (whatever it was, I
thought it made sense at the time).

Now, I boot to a GUI, but my consoles are unreadable.  They're simply
blank as installed.  If I add "vga=791" to lilo.conf, I get full-screen
scrambled versions of some of my GUI screen.

I don't even know where to start.  Is this an X86 problem, a Debian
specific issue, what was installed to do with "framebuffers" by Debian I
might need to look at, unscrew, uninstall, re-install?

Any pointers would be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

Bret