Quoting Allen Briggs,

> On the PC video cards, is it possible to get back to text mode in
> a standard fashion?  (At least for (S)VGA cards?)  If not, I don't
> know if there is a good solution.  If so, X has to tell the console
> that it's taking over, right?  So it should be possible--at least
> for ddb--to get the display into text mode before it starts writing
> to the console.

The only way might just be to call the video bios with the appropriate
int 0x10 call to set the video mode. The lower resolution/text modes
are standard. One could use the bioscall() interface (used by the APM
code) for this.

- Frank