Space Case writes:

> I have in my system a S3/Virge card.  About once a month, something bites
> the X server, causing it to coredump and leaves the console unreadable.
> (Unless I log in from another system and restart the server, but things
> don't come up quite right, then.)
> 
> Is there any way of resetting the graphics, short of rebooting the system?

Have you tried re-running the X server remotely?  It's probably a bug
if it doesn't reinitialise the video correctly.  (Either/or
X/pcvt/wscons/pccons...)