large characters in console after switching back from X11

["J. Wuttke" <j.wuttke@fz-juelich.de>]

New Debian installation (netinstall 4.0 beta as of 17jan07, X11 from today's 
mirror image) on a Lenovo T60 laptop.

X11 works fine.

<alt><ctrl><F1> brings me to a console which is in an anomalous state:
everything is printed in HUGE CHARACTERS, and it does not scroll.

<alt><ctrl><F7> brings me back to X11 which is still working fine.

The console problem is reproducible.

It does not depend on the window manager (occurs with xdm as well as with gdm).

I am currently working with a VESA driver (before I had the non-proprietary
ATI packet installed; the console problem was the same).

Thanks for any clues - Joachim