LinuxQuestions.org - Characters disappearing from console

I recently reinstalled Gentoo Linux on my 12'' flat panel iMac. I'm using kernel version 2.6.10-gentoo-r6. I'm planning on using it as a mail and web server. Because it has a built-in monitor, I set syslog-ng to log all of it's messages to both the console (/dev/tty12) and to the specified log files.

That works well and good. However, whenever a new line appears on the console (/dev/tty12), it occasionally causes other random characters to disappear. If I leave it long enough, though, all the characters eventually disappear. It seems to happen more often if it has been a long time (more than 20 minutes or so) since a line was written to the console.

Could this indicate that the computer or the monitor is attempting to go to standby and not properly clearing the screen? How could I check for this? And if that turns out not to be the case, where should I begin to look to figure out what is happening?

Here is the output from lspci:

Code:

0000:00:0b.0 Host bridge: Apple Computer Inc. UniNorth/Pangea AGP

0000:00:10.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX 400] (rev b2)

0001:10:0b.0 Host bridge: Apple Computer Inc. UniNorth/Pangea PCI

0001:10:17.0 Class ff00: Apple Computer Inc. KeyLargo/Pangea Mac I/O

0001:10:18.0 USB Controller: Apple Computer Inc. KeyLargo/Pangea USB

0001:10:19.0 USB Controller: Apple Computer Inc. KeyLargo/Pangea USB

0002:20:0b.0 Host bridge: Apple Computer Inc. UniNorth/Pangea Internal PCI

0002:20:0e.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Apple Computer Inc. UniNorth/Pangea FireWire

0002:20:0f.0 Ethernet controller: Apple Computer Inc. UniNorth/Pangea GMAC (Sun GEM)

Thanks,
(- Steve -)