gdm (or somethnig) goes deaf when changing virtual consoles

[hendrik@topoi.pooq.com]

This happens on etch, which I try to keep up-to-date.  sarge is, as 
usual, pefectly stable, quite boring, and very useful.

I'm using gdm as my login manager.  I have six virtual consoles 
configured.  Graphics is an AIT-Raden-all-in-wonder 8500 card.  RAM is 
1G.  CPU is an athlon.

a few months ago, I started experiencing this problem.  Sometimes, when 
changing virtual consoles with ctrl-alt-f*, instead of getting to the 
other console I got a black screen, and whatever subsystem that 
responds to ctl-alt-f* seemed to go deaf.

Usually it still responds in some way to the keyboard, by echoing tha 
characters typed onto the screen.
Even control-alt-delete is nicely echoed.

Is this a known problem?  Is there a known fix?

It isn't mission-critical, but I sure would like it fixed before etch 
goes stable.  My workaround is to run sarge instead.

-- hendrik