weird graphics characters when logged into runlevel 3

[Aldo Foot]

> Don Raikes wrote:
>
>> When I boot into run level 3 (console mode), I "see" a lot of random
>> graphics characters on my display.
>
> not being able to view your screen makes replying with any more helpful answer.
>
>> Any suggestions would be appreciated.
>
> what happens if you enter 'clear'?
>
> When I enter clear, the visible display (brltty) seems ok for a few minutes or perhaps a few lines, then I run into the lines again.
>
> My son was watching the system while it was rebooting the other day, and he said that the display is all messed up even as it is rebooting. I think perhaps my video card is failing.
> also, being curious about assistance for impaired vision, i ran a google-linux
> search of 'brltty' which yielded 27,900 hits. on first page, i found a link,

Try setting the terminal environment variable to a known terminal
type: ansi, vt100 or vt102.
In the bourne shell:   export TERM=<terminal choice>
The terminals are listed in /etc/termcap... not in easy to read text.

~af