After upgrading to 12.1, whenever I log out of KDE and return to the command prompt all of the text is too dark. (dark gray)
If I then log back into and out of KDE again, it gets even darker.
KDE remains fine thru all of this, and my monitor’s menu is bright enough.
Has any one else had this issue? Or have any idea where to start looking?

I saw that after the initial install. However, I built a new kernel using 2.6.25.1 without looking into it. The new kernel based on a previous config eliminated that issue. This is not to say that the 2.6.25.1 was the fix in itself, but that in building the new kernel, selections were made that fixed it.

Same here!
I've built a new kernel from a previous config, but the problem remains. I have no idea on how to fix this.

Try disabling the framebuffer in lilo.conf and see if that fixes the problem. What kernel are you using generic/huge?

Disabling the framebuffer did keep it from going dark.
I was using VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x64k vga=791
is there a different setting you would suggest to still allow framebuffing?
I am still using huge.

The only suggestion I would have is to recommend using the generic kernel. The huge kernel loads everything and the kitchen sink, could have some conflicts going on.

This happends to me too! BTW anybody that uses a Radeon card how good is the Radeon framebuffer RdaeonFB? Is it faster and/or more stable than the generic FB console?

I am now using the generic smp kernel and i still have the issue when using framebuffer.
The only way to make the text brighter is to reboot. There seems to be some command that X is issuing when i exit KDE.

Is there a command that would reset the framebuffer?

Have you tried using a lower framebuffer setting? As far as I know there isn't a way to reset the whole framebuffer -- the closest thing I know of is `reset`, but I don't know that it'll fix it. You could look into `fbset`, but I doubt that'll work either. Plus, running a command like that is still just a hack instead of fixing the real problem. There is likely a driver conflict or you're using the wrong display driver (though normally you just use the VESA driver for the framebuffer, which almost any video card should support properly). If it is indeed a kernel issue (ie that specific kernel version has the problem) you could always compile your own kernel, but that isn't really recommended unless you really know what you're doing.

Have you tried the other framebuffer sizes? For example I remember my ati card would not work with 256, but work well with 32k and 64k. Still I had some rendering issues, but it did work. Play around with the different sizes and see what works for you. Also check out "/usr/src/Documentation/fb/vesafb.txt". You can find some good info in the kernel source directory.