X/Gnome: screen goes black after being idle (and stays that way)

[John Christian <johnc909@comcast.net>]

Hello again,

X and Gnome are up and running great now ... except for one particular 
problem ... The screen goes black after being idle for a few minutes, 
and there's seemingly nothing I can do to get it to wake up. (and under 
normal circumstances, it responds to key/mouse events just fine)
This was before installing xscreensaver, which I then tried (to possibly 
take precedence over the uncurable sleep it seems to be experiencing), 
but when I click on the Screensaver section of GNOME Control Center, it 
goes black immediately!

The /var/log/XFree86.0.log doesn't seem to report anything when this 
happens.   What could the problem possibly be?

(and on another note, I'll probably soon be getting a fast PCI-graphics 
card for this machine, any reccomendations?)

Thanks,
-john