Setterm failure

[cothrige <cothrige@bellsouth.net>]

I recently have begun using the console much more on a slower machine
and have noticed that setterm does not seem to work.  I had set it in
rc.local with "setterm -blank 15" and "setterm -powerdown 45", and
while the screen will blank, it will never powerdown.  I also tried
doing it manually, just to see, by issuing the command "setterm
-powersave powerdown" but this also failed.  I have tried with the
default Debian kernel and one I have compiled, with framebuffer and
without, but nothing has worked.  So far I just can't seem to get the
monitor to powerdown.  Does anybody have any ideas about what I may be
doing wrong?

Thanks,

Patrick