screen goes dark and never comes back

[Chris Beamis]

I'm going to post this to multiple Mac lists so apologies in advance to 
those of us
signed up to more than one of them.

I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem.  I've got a dual 
866MHz G4
purchased in early Noremember 2002, running OS X 10.2.4.  For quite a 
while
now, maybe even since I purchased it, about every 3rd or 4th time the 
screensaver
software kicks in I can't get the monitor to display afterwords.  This 
happens
both when only the screen saver only is activated, and when the whole 
machine
goes to sleep.  I come back to the machine, and touch some keyboard 
keys and
wiggle the mouse but the monitor remains dark.  Pressing and holding the
power button is the only cure.

   It has been fairly annoying so far but I'm now getting a lot more 
annoyed because
it seems to happen more frequently.  It just now did it to me in the 
middle of a
long compile, so I had to let the machine sit for a while in the hopes 
that the
compile was still going.  I eventually pressed the power button, and 
upon getting
back in discovered that the compile had not finished, not that I could 
tell
before rebooting.

Any ideas whats wrong?

Thanks,
Chris Beamis