FreeBSD splash screen - freezes my Dell Inspiron 9400

[Christoph Kukulies]

I'm observing the following with 8.0 Release:

Just for fun I installed a FreeBSD splash screen "The Power to Serve" 
with the abstracted little demon.
As long as the vidcontrol screen saver (not X11, I'm not running X11 at 
present) has not fired the first time,
everything  is fine - I can work in alphanumeric mode.

But when I leave the computer unattended for a while so that the 
screensaver switches to darken/blank the screen
the first time, the machine freezes or at least cannot be woken up again 
so that the character screen shows up again.

Anyone seen this or having a clue?

Also not sure whether it is a splash screen issue at all, butr I thought 
so, since it would have come up earlier otherwise.

--
Christoph Kukulies