On Wednesday January 16 2008 16:00:16 I wrote:
> Tony, that link was very enlightening.  Those are pretty much my exact
> symptoms.  I will do some more poking in that direction when I return
> home and report my findings.
>
> Thanks again to all.
>
> -pd-

Well, I tried a few of the suggested fixes in the ubuntuforums thread linked 
to from the bug you pointed me to.  Specifically, I enabled fbcon and vesafb 
in my /etc/initramfs-tools/modules file and unblacklisted vesafb 
in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffers.  No joy.

Then it occurred to (stupid old) me that I'm seeing boot messages when I start 
up, but not when I shut down (the monitor goes to sleep as soon as KDE 
stops).  Ergo, it seems to me that it's not until KDM starts that I lose my 
other consoles.

I noticed in my kdm.log the line "(EE) intel(0): I830 Vblank Pipe Setup Failed 
0"  Might that be related?

-pd-