FC3 Power Save 'crash'

[jim branagan]

If I don't do anything with the keyboard or mouse, my fc3 box eventually 
goes into some sort of power save mode: screen blank, monitor indicates 
no video signal.  I have turned off the screen saver, turned off  power 
management in KDE, turned off acpi and apmd in services, and disabled 
power management in the bios.  But it still happens.

This used to happen in fc1 too, but in fc1 if I moved the mouse or hit 
any key, the machine came back up fully (though with about a 30 sec. 
delay).  But in fc3, if the machine ever gets in this mode, it won't 
ever wake up again.  No matter how much I twiddle the mouse and 
keyboard, I never get video again.  Best I can determine, I'm not 
getting any keyboard or mouse either (test app shows no keyboard input 
or mouse event messages).

The machine is techniquely still up - rlogin and vnc from on of my other 
machines works, and it serves http pages on my local network.  If I have 
the network connection up, I can still shut it down with rlogin/su 
root/shutdown.  But I don't always have another machine here.  In that 
case, even the on/off switch won't turn the box off.  Control-alt-del 
doesn't work anymore.  Control-alt-backspace can't even be tested with 
no video.  Typing commands at the teminal console I know is running and 
focussed doesn't work - the keyboard seems to be shut off too.  And the 
mouse doesn't even light up when I move it.  The only way I can shut 
down in this case is to yank the power cord. 

I am running straight fc3 off the cd iso's, with the 'install 
everything' option, but a minimal + KDE install shows the same problem.  
(1) Tyan i845 mother board; P4-celeron 1.7 Ghz cpu; (2) 'cognac' mother 
board, with PIII 533 Mhz,  Same behavior on both machines.

Is this a known problem?  Will it be fixed by downloading a more 
up-to-date kernel? (I'm not in a hurry to do this, since these PC's are 
not near a network connection).  Do I have something configured wrong?  
I don't see anything relavent looking in syslog.

jim branagan