I get this on a Radeon 7000 whenever I exit the Xserver and drop into the 
console.  I'm sure it has to do with the ATI drivers messing around with 
the VGA colorspace, leaving droppings here and there.

It's a minor inconvenience, as I find I can still work in the console; 
staring at the brilliant red tends to make me want to tear the wings off 
flies after a while, though.

I recall that some of the NetBSD-amiga Xservers did much the same back in 
the mid-90's.

Dave

Stefan Edwards wrote:
> Just a quick question. I was messing around with X and I got it working with a 
> ATI RAGE II + DVD. Looks great... but when I exit out of X, the console screen 
> is red, with very cool looking distortions of the normal character set. Any 
> ideas on the tweaks for this (besides leaving X running all the time...)? 
> Thanks in advanced.
>  -- Stefan
> 
> Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are krunchy and taste good with ketchup.
>   -- Anonymous (I saw this on an OpenBSD list, if you own it, claim it).
> 
>