SuSE 9.0 framebuffer problem

Hello, I'm booting SuSE 9.0 with a boot line with vga=768 and I'm seeing the penguin and all seems normal. I run fbset and it tells me that I am in the mode that I suspect. However when I try to run an app that expects a framebuffer, (i.e. using SDL) it can't find it. This works fine in other distro's of Linux, but SuSE seems to be doing something that is blocking my use of graphics at the console. Any clues out there???? Thanks in advance, et